Some people come into your life to stay. Others arrive just long enough to teach you something you didn’t know you needed to learn. “Blue” was one of those people.
He didn’t come crashing in like some great, cinematic romance. He didn’t sweep me off my feet with grand gestures or poetic confessions. He was just there—steady, patient and kind in a way that felt almost foreign to me.
When I lost my mentor, when the weight of that grief hit me so hard I couldn’t function, Blue didn’t try to fix it. He didn’t fill the silence with platitudes or tell me I’d be okay. He just sat with me while I cried and, in the middle of my sobbing, looked at me and asked, “Have you had any water?”
That was it. No dramatic declarations. No attempt to distract me from my pain. Just a simple, practical reminder that I was still a person with a body that needed care, even in the middle of heartbreak.
And for some reason, that broke me even more.
Because no one had ever taken care of me like that before—not in a way so small and effortless, not in a way that didn’t demand something in return. I had spent so much of my life believing that love—any kind of love—had to be earned. That if someone was good to you, it was because they wanted something. That care wasn’t just given freely; it was a debt that needed to be repaid.
So when Blue was kind to me for no reason other than that he was kind, I didn’t know what to do with it. It felt too good to be true, like something I had to hold onto before it disappeared. And in doing so, I ruined it.
Blue never promised me anything. He told me from the start that he wasn’t looking for a relationship, that his career came first and he didn’t have space for anything serious. I told him I understood, but I didn’t. I thought if I could just be enough—if I was good enough, patient enough, loving enough—he’d change his mind. That’s not how love works.
Instead of appreciating what we had, I turned it into something it wasn’t. I held on too tightly and pushed him away, expecting things he never offered, resenting him for not feeling the way I wanted him to. I let my own fears—my own desperate need for reassurance—suffocate something that could have just been.
I wasn’t in love with Blue the way I thought I was. I was in love with how safe he made me feel. And when you’ve spent your whole life bracing for people to hurt you, mistaking safety for love is an easy mistake to make.
Looking back, I see it now. I wasn’t mourning a lost love. I was mourning a lost friendship. The kind of friendship that didn’t need constant validation. The kind that could just exist without expectations. The kind I didn’t know how to keep because I was so convinced people only stayed if you gave them a reason to.
Blue didn’t fail me. I failed him.
I think about him —not with longing or regret—but with gratitude. I miss him, but not as someone I should have ended up with. I miss the friend who reminded me to drink water when I was too consumed by grief to remember how. The one who held me when the grief was hard to handle. The one who wiped the tears from my face and told me I was going to be okay even when it felt like the world was crumbling at my feet. The one who only wanted me to communicate with him when words got hard.
The one who showed me, for the first time, that love—real love—doesn’t have to be earned. It just is.
A reader once told me that all I ever do is tell people what not to do. That I talk about my mistakes, my regrets, the things I wish I had done differently—but never what I would do right if I had the chance. So here it is. Here’s my advice, my do this, not that moment: Love people while you have them. Not in a desperate, clinging way. Not in a way that tries to make them stay longer than they’re meant to. Just love them, freely and without expectation, while they’re here. Appreciate them for who they are in the present, not who you want them to be in the future. If I had done that with Blue—if I had simply let him be my friend, let his kindness exist without trying to turn it into something more—I might still have him in my life. But instead, I let my fear of losing him turn into the very thing that pushed him away.
So, Blue —thank you. For your patience. For your kindness. For the lesson I didn’t understand at the time but carry with me now.
And just so you know—I’ve been drinking my water.
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Confessions of a Hot Mess is the personal work of Emily Hess. The opinions expressed in this column, as well as those published in The Nevada Sagebrush, are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Sagebrush or its staff.
