I want you know that after all this time i work in the career you instructed me on.
I’m an unusual professional for this field, but decades later, im mildly successful.

I know theres no question of “us” and never was, but all these years later, i wonder if you might sometimes think about me.

After you left i went looking for you in other people.. I found some very similar, some more loving and some abusive and lost myself a bit.

I never told anyone about you: I imagine that if i ever did, they would not call us very nice names.
I’m middle aged now, the big 4-0.. You must be mid-sixties.. I wonder if we would be together now, if you had stayed.

I can tell you now that I never did meet anyone else like you..
Should we have done what we did? I don’t know if i’d been able to kept us a secret for much longer.
Leaving was the best thing you could’ve done in the long run, but the years
since have been a blur mainly because i wanted to forget about you but never quite
managed it.. I tried very hard to forget you.

I work with a young man who looks so much like you, if i didnt know better i’d think
he could be your son.. i know that back then you didnt have any children.
Curiously, the age difference between us is the same as the age i was when i met you.

He is probably the reason why i’m thinking about you now and why i write this.
Him and I get on so well, understand each other, like the same things, laugh at the
same things, finish each other’s sentences and there are some awkward silences.. its a different kind of banter when its just him and I in the office, The best i can do is accuse him of interrupting me, to make him feel bad and to make him keep his distance, of telling him to go to lunch by himself rather than with me.
Its confusing because I’m remembering you when i’m with him.
I do my best to not let my mind wonder or my guard down.. its mentally exhausting.

Thinking about you means feeling guilty. I’ve been living with a wonderful man for the past 8yrs.
He loves me and looks at me in a way that tells me he will always love me.
This is why I would never pursue anything with my colleague and why I would never look for you.. I’m old enough to know better now..

You and I had something that i cant describe.
i know that you felt the same, at least at some minuscule point in the time we were together; even if you left, i imagine that there was a part of you that loved me.. maybe even missed me.. maybe even ached and cried when you left me behind.

So many lives, including ours would have been plunged into misery and a likely a local scandal.
My family would not have understood why i would so willingly give up my youth,
before it began, to a man as old as my own father.
Your own wife at the time would probably have gone mad..
I think she did, my family are still her neighbours. She never re-married.

The first two years immediately after you left were very hard.. so much guilt, feelings of worthlessness, feeling unlovable and empty: someone so young should never have known what i learnt with you, or after you..
I am stronger for it now, but back then I was in pieces.

Im writing this here, in the hope that you might somehow see this, i feel like you continued with your career, similar to mine.
We both lived in London about 26 years ago.. our heritage is different, yours german mine italian.

I wonder what you thought of Trump, Brexit, the Conservatives being in power for the last 10yrs,
the trickle down economics you always talked to me about, or what you think of youtube, social media, ipads, smartwatches, Ai, quantum computing.. you were always tech savvy.

I want to tell you that i now have a better understanding of the holographic universe we often chatted about.. i’m into string theory, multiverses.

Im learning german now.. some part of me still wants to talk with you, listen to your voice and your mind.

I hope you are ok, that your illness didnt take you. I hope you avoided Covid and managed to get a vaccine.

If you do see this, if you recognise who i am from this, I want to say good bye to you,
but this time from my own head where you have lived all this time.