A Letter To Friend

Dear You,

Do you ever wonder why we fight so much?  The reason for the constant back and forth?  I have.  Because it isn't normal fighting.  It isn't the kind of fighting where everyone is left angry or hurt afterwards.  No.  I've never felt that way.  Never once.

It isn't arguing either.  Neither of us are trying to win anything.  We never actually try to make the other person look foolish.  We simply poke fun.  Flirt, some would say.  

Though, sometimes, I get nervous in the silence, or in the moment that you walk away, that it might actually be this time.  I might have actually crossed the line.  I might have said the thing that truly hurts.  And all the while, during that silence, I'm praying you know that I never meant it.  I would never say anything to hurt you.  Never.

I read somewhere that the person who knows how to annoy you the most, is also the person who loves you the most.  It probably has to do something with the fact that they have taken the time to observe you.  Taken the time to know what you like.  And taken the time to know what you don't like.  It's all very simple.  And it's all very true.  

Yes, I agree with that statement.

Because I've come to realize something.  There is a strange funny feeling in my stomach every time we fight.  A feeling like a smile.  Knowing that whatever comes out of your mouth and whatever comes out of mine mean the exact same thing.  Absolutely nothing.  And absolutely everything.  

How so?  You may ask.  Easy.  What we're trying to say is never what we're trying to say.  What's on the surface isn't actually what we want to surface.  It's The Iceberg Theory of our bickering.  7/8 of what we actually say is below the water. Praying the other person is wise enough to recognize it.  Because hidden in that large mass, is everything that has ever meant anything to either of us.  

And it is because of all this that I realize the most important thing about our fighting: 

I'm never fighting with you.  I'm fighting for you.  

I'm fighting for your attention.  I'm fighting for your smile.  I'm fighting for your laugh.  I'm fighting for everything that matters to me.  In you.  

And I love it.  More than anything I've ever experienced.  I love the look in your eyes when you know you're right.  I love the smile that slowly opens on your mouth when you know I'm right.  Most of the day I walk around hoping I'll bump into you.  Hoping we have some sort of exchange.  And if we do I'll ignore everyone around me.  Because they don't matter.  They don't equal what we have.  They never will.  Because I know that, at the end of the day, I'd rather fight with you than talk to anyone else.  

And relationships need this.  Otherwise they grow stagnant.  Kissing becomes old.  Movies become old.  Every moment together becomes old.  Man and woman need tension.  Not physical or psychological battery.  But they need to fight.  They need to fight for something.  And if they're good, it's always the same thing: They fight for eachother.  Or else passion goes by the wayside.  And without passion, there is not love.   

Most days, at the end of the day, I'll lay in my bed, still thinking about a fight we had earlier.  All the ways I could have made my point better.  All the ways I could have made you laugh more.  And this'll frustrate me.  I could have done this and I could have done that.  I coulda, woulda, shoulda.  But that's when I'll realize, every time, it doesn't matter.  It never did.  Because beneath the things I've said, the Yeah Right's, the Whatever's, is the thing I'm always trying to say: 

I love you more than you will ever know.