To my love who was never meant to love me,

I never thought I’d want to find a home so badly. Not the kind of home made of brick and concrete and cold but the kind of home that I think you would be. Because my brain has come to know you as home where I can be safe and it’s all OK and my lungs get heavy and my knees go weak because you are where I always want to be. You make it hard for my lungs to do what lungs do and you make my skin feel more like skin. But you will never look at me as home. I will never be home.

I hope to god that someone will find you and make you feel the way I feel about you. I hope that you will find someone who will make your heart race and your palms sweat and make you feel like you’re home. Because I love you I love you I love you. And I just want you to be happy. And I want you to feel OK about yourself, because I know that sometimes, that is the hardest conceivable thing to do.

Someday, someone will find you and make you their world and everything will make sense. It will be OK and you won’t have to love everything about yourself because they will do it for you. But I love everything about you and you are my home you are my home, and you will never know me that way but I want everything to be in the palm of your hand and I want to give it to you but I can’t and I’m so sorry. I can give you all the love I have because you deserve it and every 2 AM when I wake up and cannot sleep I will be thinking of you and I hope that you can feel it. You deserve to know that you are so loved and I want you to love someone so much that it hurts.

As long as you are happy I will be OK, and as long as you are OK I will be happy because I love you. I want you to find someone who makes it hard for your lungs to do what lungs do and makes your skin feel more like skin and it won’t be me but that’s OK—I just want it to be someone who you want so much that it hurts. That’s what love is all about, right?

Love, the girl you will never love

—By Sierra K., 18, Tulsa, Oklahoma