I'm stuck in a holding pattern.

I am all but stumbling down the hallway of a school that reminds me way too much of my past, ready to just stop walking and collapse on the linoleum floor—the day started fourteen hours ago, and in less than twelve hours I'll be waking up to do it again.

As I trudge back to the cafeteria where the rest of my team is milling around, waiting to leave, I can't help but reflect on the irony: I can spend all day dressed in a suit, speaking other people's words like scripture, ready to accept a rank and judgment on everything from my clothes to my gestures to my pronunciation; but I cannot call the person I might just love most in the world from my bedroom, dressed in my pajamas, to tell him all the words that I have done nothing but infer for years.

My friend told me last night, “You have two choices—you can pursue him until the feelings either leave or are satisfied, or you can decide that whatever you've done so far is proportionate to those feelings and let it go.”

“Nothing I do,” I said, typing the words as I thought them. “Nothing I do will be proportionate to how I feel about him, short of maybe marrying him.”

And I realize that, while the last part might be an exaggeration, the general sentiment is true. I can't think of a point where I would just... give up and not have feelings for him anymore. If that breaking point existed, I would have hit it already. I watched pot twine into his breath when we were thirteen, alcohol claim his sleep at fourteen, marks fade to scars at fifteen that will still be visible a year later. At sixteen the pills had been placed on their pedestal, and by the time I turned seventeen he had gone into and come out of treatment, and the medallion he got when he got out sits on my bookshelf, to be picked up and turned in circles like a con man's trick whenever he's particularly prevalent in my mind.

I've seen him when he's happy and when he's in tears. I tracked the cuts he made on himself and he bandaged mine for me more than once. I've spoken to him while he was sober, drunk, on uppers and downers, without sleep, with a broken heart. He's one of the people that I will answer the phone for, no matter how late at night it is or how long it's been since I've heard from him.

Yet I can't tell him straight out, “I love you. I love you like I've never loved anyone in my life and I'm not just going to repress that.” I bite my tongue and let him talk about whatever girl he's been messing around with, each word about their bodies burning like acid into my mind. I feel like I must be biting my lip hard enough to tear through every time he mentions a new fuck-buddy (although they can't really be called that, can they, if he never sleeps with them?)

Every time he talks about his fallen angel-girl, I want to scream at him. And at her for hurting him, yes, but mostly him now. She's not your only shot. You were thirteen when you started and sixteen when you ended for the last time. You're a different person now, in good and not-as-good ways, and nothing you do will bring her back to you. She dropped you more than once and left you there to pick yourself back up. But I've been here the whole time, and I love you more than life.

“I've been here the whole time.” This idea reoccurs to me a lot when I'm thinking of him, as if it were a justification for my feelings, for my sense of betrayal every time he talks about his escapades with someone else. As I turn his ever-expanding list of mess-arounds and crushes over in my mind, I have to wonder—why does he mention them to me? He knows I have feelings for him, at least a little. I did ask him out once, and he said no. But I did ask. So why does he throw their names at me like pebbles at a window? Is he waiting for me to tell him, Stop. I don't want to hear anymore, because all I want to be is where they are?

I am exhausted. I'm writing my brain out onto my computer from the back of a school bus, where the first real rain-drizzle of the year is hitting the windows—though by the time I'm done, it'll be snow again—and I could say all I want to do is sleep, but it isn't true. I want to call him first, to see if he answers. And if he doesn't, then I'll sleep.

If he does, I know I'll stay up until he pries me gently off the conversation like Velcro from a sweater sleeve, or until the pure need I have for him to love me when he doesn't boils over and burns me, and I hang up myself.

But probably, I won't even hang up then. After all, at this point, what's the difference of a few more burns?