This Is My Heart Wrapped in a Letter

To my beautiful Mom,

I didn’t give you the easiest time growing up, did I? I wish I would’ve realized and understood more, I would’ve done things so differently. But throughout the years, I have come to see things clearer now as an adult. I realize what a mother’s love is capable of, the lengths you would go to love and protect me.

I regret not taking the time to just sit and talk with you, just for a few moments at least, to share my never-ending struggles at school.

I think of those missed opportunities quite often.

My heart was always filled with such remorse, after seeing your dozens of missed phone calls. An endless ladder of the same red word on my call log, continuously pushing down the one person I love most. Then hearing your voice messages every night before closing my eyes and drifting off into Neverland. A place I became really good at escaping to — concealing the truths I’d never had the courage to tell you…until today.

But before I go on, you must know this.

I will always and forever love you Mom — with all my being. There is nothing I wouldn’t do just to be with you, to hold your soft hand in mine. It’s because of you I am a gentle, young, and caring man. I don’t know where I’d be in this world without you.

Every day, I think of you.

When I open my eyes to a new day, I remember your smiling face waking me up for school. I cherished your soft forehead kisses every morning at five thirty, on the dot. Every time I make breakfast, I’m reminded of the familiar scents of your homemade chocolate chip pancakes and burnt bacon. Remember how you would frantically yell at me to go open the doors and windows before the smoke alarm would go off? I would almost be peeing with laughter. Oh how those days brought me so much comfort.

I wish I would’ve shared so many things with you.

The familiar sound of your car keys echo in my ears as I get ready for work. The memories come rushing back, of you rattling off the checklist of everything I needed for school, especially my Snoopy lunchbox. You never could fit more than half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in that silly little thing. But I loved it and you made it work.

But most of all, I think of you when I’m all alone in my 600 square foot flat, gazing out at London’s beautiful cobblestone streets and its well-dressed people. Ever since the utter chaos of the pandemic began, I have grown comfortable spending most nights in, I guess for absolute fear of getting horribly sick. I think back to when I was young and feeling worried or anxious. I can still feel the reassuring warmth of your arms tightly wrapped around me. I miss your hugs more than you’ll ever know.

I’m probably getting ready for bed right about now, nervously contemplating what your reaction will be to what I have to say. You have no idea how many years I have wanted to write this letter to you, but just never found the right words.

May you hold on to this.

There’s no easy way of telling you this without me feeling like my heart is being ripped apart at the seams. A fragile heart you have constantly put together, mended, and nurtured countless times — however, this time I’m not sure this hole can ever be mended. But this letter is my true authentic self, every bit of me poured out from my heart and onto these few pages.

I was never as strong as you.

Even though I never had the courage to tell you face-to-face, I sincerely pray you will find acceptance in your heart. I was hurting as a teenage boy and unmindfully concealed information from the one I loved and who I know loved me most.

But to better help you understand, let me explain how it all started.

Do you remember my sophomore year of high school, when things got bad? I guess that was when the bullying started to get out of hand. I remember feeling so alone and worthless, being what seemed like the only 15-year-old guy on the soccer team to not have a girlfriend in the entire tenth grade. If you only knew a fraction of the words spoken to me in those wretched olive-green halls, the countless times I wished I would’ve punched back — you would’ve probably cried as much as I did. Those halls will forever haunt me with their flaky blotches of chipped paint; almost mocking me of my heart being stripped away.

While that year was one of the absolute hardest years of my life, it was also the same year I began to keep secrets from you. I guess I was just dealing with so much hurt and sadness that I didn’t feel like I needed to tell you everything that was happening in my life. You had enough on your plate already. But in the last few weeks of school, things changed.

It was the final qualifying game to determine if we would go on to State, and I was a bucket full of sadness. I didn’t even want to participate, but I knew I had to push past my emotions. It had started to drizzle right at the beginning of the game when I slipped and bumped into another player on the opposing team. I remember lying flat on the ground, gasping for air, the wind knocked out of me. My freshly ironed soccer jersey now smeared with mud. As I tried to move my body, a sharp pain abruptly shot up my right wrist. Clutching my wrist, I looked up to see what appeared to be a blurry figure of a boy running towards me. It looked as if he was wearing the blue and black colors of the opposite team. Next thing I knew, he was kneeling over me asking if I was okay. Slowly nodding, I told him that I needed to go to the nurse’s office. I stood up, innocently trying to clean off my entirely mud-soaked uniform (like I could magically dust off the mud stains), feeling embarrassed. Smiling at me with concern, he offered to walk me there himself.

I later found out his name was Noah.

Noah Prescott — a tall, physically lean senior, two years above me. His hair was a dark shade of brown with eyes the color of caramel.

Even though I had never noticed him before when competing, I immediately knew he was different from all the others. I really felt like I had finally found the best friend I had always imagined, and in many ways — I had.

We got each other’s numbers after I left the nurses office that day. I remember I could barely type my number into his phone, I nervously laughed at my left hand’s completely uncoordinated fingers. I never thought we would’ve become such incredibly good friends in such little time, but we did.

You see, after I met Noah, I thought we’d always just be there for each other and stay best friends — until it came time for his graduation. He was accepted into his dream school, Stanford University, on account of his incredible grades and athletic abilities. We both knew what that would do to our friendship. Living halfway across the country would most definitely cause a rift between us, but I hadn’t truly realized the emotional impact it would have on me. It wasn’t until a few months before he left when it truly hit me.

I was going to be alone again.

We ended up spending that entire summer together, hanging out at Clock Hill Lanes, mostly bowling and ordering an insane amount of fries with ranch dip (he arguably thought ranch was superior to ketchup anytime fries were involved, but I always disagreed). When we weren’t bowling, we would grab burgers from that little Mom and Pop restaurant next door to the cinema and go see the newest action movies. Other times, we would hang out at our favorite ice cream shop, “Sweetees” and order massive banana split sundaes that would have us regretting every, last bite.

While hanging out with Noah was an escape from my school misery, around halfway through the summer was when I realized that I needed to admit something to myself, and more importantly — to Noah.

We met up outside the library later that week and I confessed to him the truth — the real me. The me I had spent so many years dragging down, trying to hide, afraid of what others would think. Ever since that day, almost two years ago, I have been dying inside with this secret, a secret I have been keeping from everyone. But most importantly, a secret I’ve kept from you.

It still feels strange writing the words on paper.

But what I never had the courage to tell you Mom, was that the day I met my best friend — I had just fallen in love with my boyfriend.

I had chosen to bury these feelings into the very depths of who I was and of the young man I was becoming. At the time, I didn’t understand what it was or what I was feeling. My brain couldn’t comprehend or make sense of it.

All I knew was this. Noah was there for me when I needed a friend the most, and I liked being around him.

He proved to be more than an incredibly kindhearted and compassionate person, always expressing a deep concern for my well-being. I could text him whenever I needed a friend, someone to talk to about my issues at school. That one day I came home with a busted lip, (I’m sure you remember) Noah took me for ice cream after school and talked me down from an anxiety attack.

I know I’ve kept a lot hidden from you, but in my defense, I was doing the right thing to protect the one person I loved most — you. You were so busy working your three jobs I just didn’t want to trouble you with more, let alone the drama of your only child questioning his sexuality. Up until high school, I always thought I liked girls. Especially the girl who gave me my first kiss in eighth grade. You remember Lilly Sing don’t you?

She was special.

She always smelled like strawberry milkshakes and wore little pink ribbons tied at the tops of her pigtails every day without fail. You thought she was ‘as cute as a button’, in your words. I remember having such a massive crush on her throughout middle school (as I am sure you well remember), until I got to high school.

Noah and I were friends in the beginning, after our unconventional rainy day soccer encounter. It wasn’t until we hung out during the summer, my heart began to suddenly shift towards a different direction — a direction I had yet to uncover.

I remember like it was yesterday, feeling caught in an utter whirlwind of unexplainable confusion and fear. I didn’t think I could ever feel that way, especially towards a boy. I hated myself for so long, desperately trying to come up with a possible answer as to why I suddenly felt this way. I only ever came up with an empty slate of unanswered questions in my heart and in my mind. No explanation, no definitive answers from the universe. Just my troubled mind, trying to think of how I would ever tell you the way I truly felt.

You see, it’s one thing to finally admit being bisexual, but it’s another thing when it comes to the spectrum of feelings you can experience over a brief time. One minute, I’m soaring over a pastel rainbow holding Noah’s hand in mine, full of assurance and happiness, the next, a pretty girl walks by and I’m left with a jumbled Jenga mind. Pull one thought off my tower, and the rest could come crashing down.

At the time, I didn’t know Noah and I would grow to become each other’s best friend (let alone boyfriend), until the night of my sixteenth birthday. I remember you said I could have a bowling party. I had invited some of the kids from school, just a few of the ones I would occasionally talk to. You had asked me to invite them. I knew I didn’t have friends and deep down, I wondered if you knew that too. Who would want to come?

I was so excited that night. I wore my “lucky” mint green polo. You know the one I accidentally left in my gym locker for a month. It smelled like your failed cheese covered pork chop recipe you found on Pinterest when I discovered it. As I stared down at my extremely beaten-up white converse, I realized it was getting late and that nobody was coming. Then out of nowhere, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I sincerely thought it was an employee coming over to ask me about my already 40-minute deserted lane I had prepaid, but it wasn’t.

It was Noah.

After an extremely apologetic three-minute speech as to why he was late, we decided to bowl together. While I was picking out our bowling balls, he had sneakily ordered four baskets of over greased fries and an ample amount of ranch sauces (that was when I found out he only likes his fries with ranch. Never ketchup). There they were, waiting at our table.

The night went on, we bowled and ate too many over greased fries until we finally decided to call it quits around 10ish. Since I had taken the bus to get there, he offered to drive me back home so I wouldn’t miss curfew. That was just typical Noah for you.

I agreed and so he drove me back. I arrived just in time before my curfew. I thanked him for the ride and was already making my way to the front gate when I heard him call out for me to wait. I had no idea what to expect. As I turned around and saw him get out of his car, I noticed him carrying a small bag in his hand. He looked a little nervous, handed me the bag and asked me not to open the gift until he left. I smiled and looked down at the gift with a slight giggle and agreed.

It was a beautiful night, a light breeze was blowing. Noah looked at me and our eyes locked. Slowly reaching out to hold my face in his hands, he softly smiled and kissed me.

And in that moment, I knew he felt the same way about me.

After our kiss, he wished me a happy birthday and drove off, waving with the biggest smile on his face. My stomach was full of butterflies as I made my way to the front door and up to my room, eager to open his birthday gift. As I began to un-wrap the light blue tissue paper, my heart did a summersault as I stared down at a small Spiderman keychain (Our favorite Marvel superhero). Flipping the keychain over, I noticed a single word with a tiny, doodled heart at the end of it. Written in his recognizably, awful handwriting was the word “Always”.

From then on, I knew my heart didn’t have to lay in its normality of utter disarray and confusion. The brokenness and sadness I had carried for so long on my shoulders no longer seemed relevant. All the times I felt like I wasn’t my own person — like somebody else had been wearing my skin, living the life I had always wanted to live.

I had finally found myself.

I’d been desperately searching for who I was, feeling trapped inside of someone I wasn’t. A person I didn’t even know existed, until I met Noah — my absolute best friend who always saw the real me.

Since then, we’ve been dating for almost three years now. I can honestly tell you, being with Noah have been some of the absolute happiest years of my life. If I knew then that the pain and heartache would all have been worth something, I wouldn’t have wished for my life to be any other way.

If you wouldn’t have kept me at that school, despite the never-ending mental and physical abuse — I never would have met Noah.

So, I guess this brings you to the end of an extremely long and overdue catch up on everything that has transpired over the last four years. Coming to the end of it all, I feel so much better having put my words on paper for you to read. I truly hope that you felt my heart through every word. I am deeply sorry for keeping you in the dark for so long. I will always love you regardless of what you decide about me.

You are an incredible mother and no matter what, just know that it was nothing you did or didn’t do. I just had to figure things out on my own.

And I finally did.

I love you Mom and please call me once you’ve had time to read and digest all of what I’ve said. Noah and I would absolutely love to come for a visit.

Until then, Happy Mother’s Day.

With all my heart,

Josh