I'm going to do my best to be concise, not that I imagine that my brevity will appear as anything but aimless wandering to you, and I'm going to try to be honest.
When you ask what I think on any given topic, I hesitate to answer candidly, not because I don't know what I think, but because I do know what I feel, and the two very rarely acquiesce to the implications of the other, and it seems that you're only interested in what I think; after all, emotions are too sporadic to be given any validity or actual consideration. When I attempt to explain myself to you, there are so many necessary tangents that I must take, but you behave as though they are meaningless and confusing, as though you are constantly waiting for me to get to the point. It makes me feel so hurried that I rush to tie everything together more quickly, but that's not generally possible, so everything becomes all the more confusing, and you look as though it's pointless even attempting to converse with me because I'm so clearly obtuse.
My views have always been so mismatched, so completely, offensively mismatched. And, quite frankly, religion has not ever been so comforting as for me to hold to it simply out of fear or wishful thinking. While I may answer with honesty that I disbelieve many of the claims of the Bible, or that I'm certain to no degree that it accurately portrays God, or even whether there exists a God at all, I am frustrated to know that you will gladly pounce upon this and entirely discard my feelings as being irrelevant in the face of logic, even as I tell myself daily that desire is irrelevant in the face of reality. The thing is, when it comes to life, atheism seems more, not less, comforting than theism, so if I was carelessly evaluating my true thoughts and motives, I would happily jump into atheism, based on these feelings. When I said that I will hurt and worry those I love, I meant that, if I were to be more open about my views, it would cause grief and concern for my lost soul, my lost morality, because I had been led astray.
Your words cannot overwhelm the effect of your demeanor; I recognize that my natural appearance has certain responses that I cannot always anticipate. For me, your words have far less impact than does the forcefulness of your expressions and actions. Regardless of how often you tell me that you want to know what I'm thinking, I do not feel secure enough to expose my thoughts to you. You pull away from me so easily, too easily, and too often. I want to know that you want to know me, but then you pull back from me, and it only seems to confirm the fear that it's not safe to be open with you, and that hurts because I really want to be open with you.
It has always been remarkably difficult for me to overcome my insecurities. I know that you're not very physically demonstrative, and it doesn't bother me, but I nearly always felt as though I had to initiate contact with you; and that you were less interested in being near me and enjoying my company. I think that in many ways this was never fully resolved or even addressed, and it has carried over to our friendship. You need intellectual closeness in order to establish emotional closeness, but if I feel emotionally withdrawn from you, you will never find your way into my mind because that is not safe for me. For me, physical contact is evidence of emotional security. While it may simply be a social convention to you, and an unnecessary one at that, I need for you to recognize that your physical distance (and consequent emotional distance) is directly linked to the intellectual detachment you sense from me.
You are one of the few people I know who make me feel very safe and very exposed at the same time, and it is frightening as hell, and I don't know how to react. I don't know what you want, and it breaks my heart when you say it doesn't matter or that you don't really care about it, because you should care about it, it should matter. All I can hear when you speak that way is that I don't matter enough to impact you, I cannot affect you at all. Friends affect one another, people interact and they impact one another. That's life, that's how it works. I feel as though, even as I'm writing this letter, even as I'm trying so very hard to help you understand, you'll still consider this to be the pathetic, incoherent ramblings of an irrational woman, and you'll disregard them as such.
I don't think I ever came to a point in time when I knew, knew beyond any practical doubt, that you loved me unconditionally and would always do so; that no matter what I ever said or did or thought, you would still want to be my friend. When I said that I don't believe anything could hurt you, I was being truthful, but I left off... What I meant to say was that I don't believe that anything I can do could hurt you. I don't imagine that my words or my actions can do anything beyond annoy or frustrate you, and the rest of the people on the planet are capable of accomplishing the same effect, so that makes me no different. However, I know exactly the effect of which you are so easily capable. And I know that you are capable, with just your carelessness or indifference, of hurting me so much. And I cannot imagine that this would upset you enough to cause you to take action.
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