I Know You Were My Crush, but Can We Still Be Friends?

We’re bringing to you letters written by women to women they love, miss, cherish or just remember. To celebrate the support women continue to show each other, this is #ToHER.

From: A woman who wants to remain friends with her crush

To: Danielle, her ex-crush

Dear Danielle, 

I need to be freed from your bondage.

I met you on a dating app in 2021, and our conversations there were kind of boring. We both opened that app once every couple of days, and I don’t think there was anything about us interesting enough to get us to keep talking. Then we moved to Twitter, which I believe is the app of the unhinged. With Twitter came a new ease. We laughed a lot and shared tweets a lot. I smiled so much, my friends knew I had gotten a crush. 

It’s weird because now that I think about it, I don’t know why exactly I have a crush on you. It’s not like you went out of your way to flirt with me or court me. We had normal conversations about normal things and you teased me constantly about how young I was. Sometimes you were vulnerable. I believe I didn’t keep secrets from people, but I knew those conversations we had weren’t ones you discussed so often. I felt like you actively involved me in your life — and although I shouldn’t have — I felt special. 

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I tried so hard to fight how I felt because things like this never end well for me. The crushes always lose their interest for reasons I can’t explain and I’m right back to square one. So one day I texted you and told you I’d decided to free you from my bondage. There was an age difference we had that bothered you, so I wanted you not to worry or guard every action around me. I wanted you happy and free. But even though I’ve freed you from my bondage, I don’t think you’ve released me from yours. 

I want us to be friends, but I don’t know how. I want to text you every day, but I’m scared you’d think this is me fighting hard for something that’ll never be. I want to double text and have proper conversations with you again, but all I feel is fear. I’m scared you’re telling your friends about the girl that won’t leave you alone or you’d find me embarrassing and my attempts at friendship ridiculous. I want to send you random pictures and tell you about people I like, but I’m scared. 

You’d think I should be able to have this conversation with you to clear things up, but if it takes me three days to mentally prepare myself to tell you “hi”, how could I manage that? I miss talking to you randomly and knowing things about you. But I’ve messed up this exact situation once, and I don’t want to do it again. 

Yours sincerely,

Lucy

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