I’m going to tell you a secret. Well, secrets.

I have been keeping a lot of secrets from you since the first time we met. You can actually say that I was too afraid, not because I didn’t want to expose them but because I was afraid of your reaction once you knew.

My first secret is that I knew your secret. I have known it since the day you told me that you loved me, and I answered back that I also loved you. I knew by then that you meant it, and I was a jerk for replying a very vague answer. Back then, I never really loved you the way you loved me. I was sorry for giving you some false hope. I didn’t know that it would make you expect more from me.

I knew that you really did love me. I knew that every time you looked at me, your heart beat fast. That every time you heard me sing, there were butterflies in your chest. I knew that every time you wanted to be like me, or every time you said you were the happiest when we were together, you secretly wished that I would also feel the same way as you did. In fact, I did, but because you were a friend.

I’ve always known that either you would cry yourself to sleep or wait for me to come back whenever I was not around. I knew that it was hard for you when I left even for some time, and every time you made calls checking out on how I was doing, if I had already taken dinner, if I had already drank my medicine, or if I had already put my clothes inside my bag. You acted like a boyfriend, and at first I thought that you were just being a considerate friend. But I realized that it wasn’t just because I was your friend and I just let you do that. It was my second secret.

My third secret is that I knew when you got tired of loving me. That was the time when I started to become indifferent to you because I thought that what you were doing to me was too much. That the expectations that you had from me was too suffocating. But you endured all of the things that I said to you, the things that I did to you. You were a martyr of love, and by that time, I was more frustrated to get away from you. As I did so, our distance grew longer. I thought it was because of the fact that I was running away from you. But it was because you were also becoming tired of chasing me, until you completely stopped running after me.

The fourth secret is that I turned around and waited for you. I kept asking myself why you turned around and ran the other way around although I knew that it was completely my fault. I was too confident that you would keep on chasing me, but you didn’t.

Probably the most important secret is the fifth secret. I realized that I was in love with you. I was in love with you but it was already too late. By that time I decided to give it a try, you were already not there. You had moved on that fast. I asked myself if I became too harsh with you, or if I made the wrong decision. I wanted to tell you that I needed you back in my life and that I couldn’t live without you.

Sixth secret. You were my first heartbreak. No, you were my first extreme heartbreak. You completely moved on with someone else, and at first, I wasn’t aware. As a matter of fact, I was the last to know. That time, I bet you wouldn’t stay long, but you did, and you decided to get married. But I still didn’t admit that I loved you. Why? What’s the purpose, right? If I admitted, would you change your mind? You were that one person who wouldn’t change his mind whatever happened, right? I didn’t want to ruin the friendship that we had, because it’s the only thing that we had, the only happy memory that I had with you. I decided to give my all, and make you feel my love for you, just like what you did to me when you were in my place. I gave my all, but I didn’t ask for anything in return, just like how you didn’t ask something in return. I looked at you as if I wanted to make you the happiest man in the world. And that was my promise.

Seventh secret. I kept my promise. I wanted you to completely be happy with someone else. That was the reason why I didn’t attend your wedding. If you don’t want to do something, you would have to need an alibi, right?

Eight and last secret. I never stopped loving you. What we had at first, it was beautiful. It was so beautiful and it could have been more beautiful, if only I gave myself a chance to reveal these secrets way earlier. I am sorry for being a jerk. But I still love you, by the way.