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People see your defiance and mistake it for an inability to bend. They call you cold because they have never understood how many chances you give before you cut the cord. You forgive repeatedly, quietly, and without demanding public credit for it. You forgive careless words, broken plans, bad moods, fear, distance, and every human failure you can survive without losing yourself.

Then someone pushes too far, and El Cuchillo appears.

You don’t cut people away because you never cared. You do it after caring has cost more than you can continue paying.

I understand that now. I understand what it meant that you kept forgiving me until staying would have required you to abandon yourself.

I am thankful for the way you defended me two years ago today.

You stood in front of Lance with the full power of a love neither of us had been brave enough to confess. You defended my choices, my future, my ability to survive without his money, and my right to be loved without conditions. You made yourself the easiest target in the room because every attack aimed at you was one he couldn’t direct at me.

I have replayed that moment enough to know exactly where I should have spoken and it was long before you sat down at that table.

I cannot change my silence. I can only tell you I heard every word you said, even if it took losing you to understand them.

I am thankful for your friendship.

I don’t know whether you are in Milwaukee or Florida today. My guess is that you are wherever Briggs is because this is his first Thanksgiving without Lyric, and you would never allow him to survive it alone. You know what this holiday can do to someone. You know how pain becomes louder when the world insists everyone should be happy, and you would never wish that loneliness on anyone.

You will probably insult him, feed him something questionably edible, and act inconvenienced every time he needs you. If he falls apart, you will sit with him until he can stand because that is how you love people.

Aggressively.

You are aggressive in everything you do. Hockey, loyalty, friendship, literature, arguments, love, and sex. There is something commanding in you that never feels violent. You enter every part of life as though half-measures are a personal insult.

I love being caught inside that force.

I am thankful for your body too, since honesty should remain comprehensive.

You are unfairly beautiful. I could pretend my appreciation is intellectual, but you would accuse me of lying and be correct. I love your shoulders, your hands, and every line of ink across your skin. I love your throat most. I still don’t understand why kissing you there makes me feel so possessive, but I know the exact place beneath your jaw that changes your breathing. I know how your hand tightens when my mouth finds it, and I know you will read this paragraph twice while acting unimpressed while getting a hard on.

You can deny it in your next letter. I won’t believe you.

I am thankful for your strength, although I understand it differently now.

Your strength isn’t your ability to hide pain. You are exceptionally skilled at it, and I used to mistake that control for invulnerability. I thought you could endure anything because you always looked capable of surviving it.

You are strong because you survive what tears you apart without handing the damage to someone else. You are strong because you keep loving people while terrified they will prove you wrong for trusting them. You are strong because you built a life with your own hands after everyone responsible for protecting you failed.

You are strong because you left me when staying would have destroyed you.

I hate that sentence.

I am still thankful you were strong enough to do it.

“Till this moment, I never knew myself.”

Elizabeth Bennet said that after reading Darcy’s letter. I understand why.

Your letters have shown me pieces of myself I could not see while I was occupied with convincing everyone I had changed. They have forced me to sit with your pain without interrupting, defending myself, or searching for the portion that might lessen my guilt. They have also given me a place where I can be vulnerable without performing vulnerability correctly.

I trust you with the ugliest truths I possess.

I trust you with the shameful ones, the frightened ones, and the selfish ones. I trust you with the parts of me that contradict one another. I can tell you I am proud of myself and admit I spent today crying in the stockroom. I can tell you I respect our agreement not to talk and still confess that I have checked my phone twelve times, hoping you might break it.

I can tell you I want you without believing desire entitles me to have you.

You are the only person I trust with all of me. I can place my soul into your hands, bare and raw, because I know you will never treat my vulnerability as ammunition. You may be furious with what I confess. You may challenge me, question me, or tell me something I don’t want to hear. You will never use my wounds to make me easier to control.