Hey, you.

I’m glad you decided to read this.

I was really scared to write it, actually.

But not scared because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. Mostly just scared because (and, call me crazy here) we are kind of a tricky concept.

When I say we’re “tricky”, I don’t really mean “tricky” like the locker combinations we always forgot in middle school or the Pinterest recipes we try that never turn out quite like they do in the pictures.

When I say “tricky”, what I actually mean is that we’re the kind of people that can’t really be described by yes or no. We aren’t black or white, rain or shine, awake or asleep.

Instead, we fall somewhere clumsily in between all those things.

We are the maybe between yes and no. We’re the gray between black and white, the overcast between rain and shine, and the daydream between awake and asleep.

You and I? We are “almost”.

“Almost” is a really funny concept, isn’t it? It has this peculiar stubbornness to it, kind of like that one unnerving competitor that always manages to stand in the way of “we tried our best” and “we actually won the race”.

But “almost” is also the reason we hold onto things so tightly. It’s the hopefulness that keeps us dreaming, the anticipation that makes us wish on shooting stars, and the driving force behind, “I’m just not quite willing to give up”.

I like to think that words are usually a pretty close friend of mine. Yet somehow, as I sat down to put these words on paper, I couldn’t seem to find any combination of them that would accurately describe what exactly our “almost” means to me.

But, I’m still going to try, because I’ve spent far too much time thinking instead of speaking, dreaming instead of doing, and hoping instead of being.

I’m still going to try, because our “almost” – our crazy, clumsy, hard-to-explain “almost” – is my, “Don’t you worry, I promise everything is going to be alright.”

I don’t normally do this sort of thing. And I especially don’t do it when the best way to describe it is “almost”. I’m the sort of person who stays silent until the other person speaks, who swims in her thoughts more than she ever shares them, and who won’t ask unless she already knows the answer is yes. Because it’s scary doing it any other way, you know? It’s scary laying your whole heart out on the table for someone else to see or to pick apart, to accept or to reject, or even to laugh at, if they wanted to. I can’t defy human nature – just like everyone else that ever felt any emotion in their life, I don’t always like to be vulnerable.

But it’s kind of a funny story.We are kind of a funny story – one that I couldn’t really deny falling victim to any longer. And we have been that funny story since day one. It hasn’t always been the cutesy funny story, though, or the kind of funny story that we like to watch on "Friends" or "How I Met Your Mother". It’s the kind of funny story that has an eerie similarity to all our terrible old middle school photos – the ones where we all thought we were doing it right at the time, but when we look back on it, we can’t help but sheepishly laugh at everything we were doing so horribly wrong. That whole (hilarious) hindsight thing? Yeah, that’s us. But you wanna know the funniest part of our funny story? It’s that I never once changed my mind. Embarrassing moments, terrible decisions, “I shouldn’t have done it that way” and all – I’ve been down for you since day one.

Sometimes, it doesn’t really feel like “almost”. Part of “almost” is fighting a battle with the vague, the unknown, and the ambiguous. It’s a battle whose lines are drawn not in stone or in concrete, but in the sand – lines that not only get washed away every time a wave passes over them, but that also manage to be redrawn a little bit differently every time they do. But sometimes, I feel like that battle has been halted by a waving white flag – a silent truce that reminds me, “Honey, you’re the one drawing those lines”. It’s okay when we feel vague and ambiguous, when our path isn’t clear and when our lines get blurred. But it’s also okay when they don’t. It’s okay when we feel confident and comfortable, when we are vulnerable with each other and when we live as if those lines in the sand never existed in the first place. It’s okay to fall without looking down.

I haven’t missed out on anything. And I promise I don’t plan to. There’s something to be said about someone like you – someone who selflessly holds himself back, not because he’s not confident, but because he’s more worried about me than he is about himself. You’re not being selfish, and I promise you’re not holding me back. Missing out on something else would mean I’m not happy with what’s already right in front of me. But, in case I haven’t told you yet, I really, really am.

But that doesn’t mean I want you to miss out on anything either. Being an “almost” sometimes means priorities get fuzzy. But that’s okay. I don’t need to be your top priority. In fact, I don’t want to be. I know I’m not there with you, and you’re not here either (at least not right now). That means I want you to enjoy your life. I want you to have fun, to be spontaneous, to do whatever it is you want to do, without me being on your mind 24/7. I know the list of priorities that’s sitting in front of you is already a little hectic, crazy, and downright absurd sometimes. I definitely don’t need to be number one.

I’m scared of real life too. Real life is happening, and it’s happening for both of us in different ways. Real life is graduating from college. It’s finding a real job and getting a new apartment. It’s going to grad school and becoming an adult – for real this time. But the beauty of “real life” is that it doesn’t stop for anyone – it wants to be challenged a little bit, to keep us on our toes and to press our luck, and to experience all the ups, the downs, the sideways, and, yes, the almost’s. And whether real life experiences all of that right alongside us, or whether she experiences it with us individually, I have a feeling she didn’t design anyone else’s “real life” to be perfectly incompatible with another’s.

You still make me nervous. But don’t worry, it’s the good kind of nervous. The “keep-me-crazy”, “butterflies-in-my-stomach”, “I’m-not-done-falling-for-you-yet” kind of nervous. It’s the nervous that makes me talk way too much when we’re on the phone, that makes me smile a little too big when I see your name, and (to be entirely honest) made me do another lap around the room at 3 a.m. that one time I finally saw you again, simply because my heart flipped completely upside-down the first time around. They say that having butterflies in your stomach just means your heart is smiling. I’m starting to think they might be right.

Thank you. For the little things, the trivial things, the mundane things, and the big things (that you maybe didn’t even realize were so big). Thanks for listening to my dumb stories, for giving me shit for being a year (and maybe some change) younger than you, and for calling me “Em” even when I never told you that that’s the nickname I love the most. Thank you for the after-work phone calls, for the nervous “I-can’t-believe-I-just-ran-into-you-here” hugs, and for teaching me that it is, in fact, legal to drive with your headphones in. Oh, and thank you for just being you. That’s kind of my favorite part.

You’re still reading this? Good, then I’ve got you suckered in 😉 Just kidding. But really, this is probably the longest freaking thing I’ve ever written. Even I got to the end of it and laughed at how stupidly long it was. So thanks for reading the whole thing (and thanks for making me nervous enough to still be talking too much, even when my words are on paper).

I still laugh about the first time we met (and how royally I screwed that up).

I guess they weren’t kidding when they said hindsight is 20/20.

Think of this letter as an apology for that weekend – as the words I never got the chance to say the first time around.

Maybe time just got the best of me – of both of us.

But the truth is, time is never going to slow down for us. But it also isn’t going to speed up just because we do. Time is going to be right here, stepping on the back of our shoes and tying our shoelaces together, just waiting for us to notice it – to take it, leave it, or waste it.

Some of the things I wrote in this letter may be irrelevant by the time you read it.

Heck, maybe the whole damn letter will be irrelevant.

But that’s a risk I’m willing to take. Not because I’m a particularly risky person or because luck always manages to fall on my side (it doesn’t).

It’s because it’s a risk I’ve already put off long enough.

And how foolish would I be to have never taken it? To be left with a pile of words in front of me that spell “everything I didn’t say” instead of “everything I took a risk for”?

I don’t really know what lies ahead of us. And I would be lying if I said I didn’t wish I knew. But I do know that maybe someday we’ll get it right.

I don’t know when that “someday” will come along, but if and when she ever decides to, I sure would be happy to see her.

But until then, I’m okay with “almost”. And I’ll keep being okay with “almost” until you’re not, no matter what that might mean.

Xoxo your clumsy, confusing, avocados-are-definitely-a-fruit “almost”,

Em