His Name Is Beautiful, And He's Blessed With Wings

The Questions: Do you truly love someone or do you just love the thought of someone? Do you just love the memory of someone?

I will answer my own questions first, as a complimentary introduction.  To be honest, I don't know if I truly loved him.  I can't explain how I feel about him at this date and time.  After almost 2 years of active efforts to keep him off my mind, I can still remember a lot of details, but more importantly, I have forgotten many as well.  Unfortunately it was all for naught, because the more insistent part of me doesn't want to let him go.  That leads me to the answer to the second question: I do love the thought of him.  Even now, even after I've imagined all the possibilities of how a relationship with him could have been like, the good and bad, I still love what I know about him.  Lastly, I absolutely, indefinitely, love the memory of him.  It gives me a thick, choking feeling in my throat just to say all this, but I need it to be materialized somewhere.  For some reason, expressing things like this on paper, in digital text, or just verbally passing it on gives it some sense of immortality.  And I don't want it to die.  He was probably the best friend I'll never have again.  The last thing he told me was to have no regrets, but he didn't even let me respond before disappearing, so I'm answering here: All of this, everything I have done and all the people I have met after you; letting you go, being too rash and naive to know what to do about it- I regret all of it.  I can't apologize enough to you for my indecisiveness, my impulsive behavior, and my inconsideration toward your feelings.  I am so, so sorry.  

I didn't think much of it at the time- I was just having fun and living in the moment, never thinking that he might just run away from me one day.  I admit though, I truly did enjoy his presence: the jokes, laughs, hugs, kisses, and most of all, just talking with him.  It's the talking that really makes it.  It's the talking that inks in the greatest memories.  However, I was so blinded by happiness that I took him for granted.  I thought that happiness would never end, and I didn't even realize that it was because of him that I was so happy.  When he left, he took the happiness with him.  I didn't know.  I didn't know.  My ignorance and lack of understanding forced him away.  

I am truly a terrible, terrible person.  I write this and proofread it over and over again, somehow convincing myself that it would be enough to bring him back if he just read it.  How selfish is that?  How can something so minuscule as an apology be enough to bring someone back into your life?  

He says he will only keep running, because it will keep him happy, so he will keep running.  

He will never return to my side.  My best friend. We understood each other so well, our perfect team.  I've never changed so much for anyone, and on my own.  

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I feel a little silly linking something from Youtube, but it's relevant to the case and the song was dutifully stuck in my head while I was writing this.  He was my sweetest downfall.

But even more relevant, some rain.