Terrified of intimacy; 5 years of mixed sig Can I still tell him I love him?

P.S. Saw him at school tonight; no big deal. He was in a weird, serious mood with everyone tonight. One of the artists was playing with his curls (bitch!) and he didn’t even react. I hung out a bit listening to the soundtrack one of his musician friends had written but then I went to go look for him. He was playing the guitar by himself on the couch. I asked him to show me how and he did. Touched my hands a lot to get me to do it properly. It was really nice. At one point, I playfully swatted his hand away from me because I wanted to try something he had shown me – “my turn! my turn!” but I don’t think he got the joke… he jumped up and took a few steps away from me. But then he came back and sat next to me again and showed me some more things. Another musician called him away and he left.

I know it means nothing, but it was really nice to spend that time with him and feel his hands on mine.

Something else: I realize how odd it is that I’ve kept this huge secret from my friends here. I never told them about my history/feelings for F because I was too embarrassed. I knew they all knew him. I didn’t want to put them in awkward positions. But it’s a huge part of me that they don’t know about. They don’t know why I have stayed here so long. They don’t know that literally 99% of the time, if they see me looking sad, it’s because of him. They don’t know that they’ll never see me again and it’s because of the famous F!

It’s kind of sad.

My best friends in Italy know, but they’re not from the town I live in; they’re all from the next town over so they don’t know F. Or, rather, they didn’t know him before they met me. By now they’ve heard that name so many times that they can’t stand it anymore.

My friends who are from the town where F and I live don’t know. Except for snaky S, but only because one night he noticed me looking at F and teased me about it; I was desperate at the time so I confided in him. Big mistake. At first his advice was really insightful (“this guy is used to easy prey. That he couldn’t get you is his failing, not yours”) but then things got totally weird so I had to stop talking about it with him. As for my other close friends here? They’ve never asked, I’ve never told them. It kind of feels ridiculous now that I never even told the girls, including C. C *might* have guessed; when we first met, I told her that I also liked someone in the music scene and she was with me that night when I saw F and his ex together for the first time but she’s never said anything to me. No one has ever said anything to me. Only Marco, F’s close friend who knew us when we were dating. Marco has, over the years, tried a few times to bring F up to me but I always changed the subject. And lately, PG – another of F’s friends who works at the music school – has dropped some hints that he might know but I could just be reading too much into things….

I have to change my focus. It’s not telling him I love him because I think I can get him. It’s telling him I love him to get the closure. But please keep in mind that I’ve been trying to do that for years. If you recall, I even came to this message board in the first place to ask how to do this. I decide it’s time for closure and I get ready to go get it and then something ALWAYS happens to suck me back into the fantasy that I can actually have him. Two years ago when I reached out to him after our two year Cold War… my intention was to get that closure. But then he was, to my shock, so open and warm and we’d have those long talks into the wee hours where he never mentioned his girlfriend and gave me rides home and invited me to his school… I read too much into it. I thought those encounters were about ME and OUR connection, but now I realize they were probably much more about him and his relationship with his ex. Maybe they just weren’t getting along or something and I was there and available to distract himself with.

Anyway, I’ll tell him and soon. I don’t know when, though – one thing I’ve noticed about him is that it NEVER goes well for me when I try to initiate meetings. Even when we were dating and he really wanted me he didn’t like this; I’d invite him to dinner and he’d always make me sweat a bit before accepting. And we saw how well it went when I tried to invite him to dinner last month; he didn’t even let me get the words out. Who knows what he thought I was going to say?

Fortunately – or unfortunately, depending how you look at it – I have a LOT of experience in love confessions. Not mine, of course. Other men. Sometimes I think my situation with F is karma punishing me for how many men I’ve disappointed. A lot of men have wanted the chance to love me and I haven’t been able to give it to them. 🙁 However, that means I’ve seen a wide variety of love confessions and I know what’s good and what isn’t.

So.

It needs to be in person. Not that I have a choice, considering that I don’t have his phone number. But no letters, either.
We need to be alone in a neutral place. It can’t be at school with people running around or on the street or what have you.
It needs to be brief and to the point.
Ask him for nothing, only to listen.
Don’t touch him (last May, a friend of mine was confessing his feelings to me and kept trying to hold my hand… I was not pleased)
Don’t argue about it with him (I’ve had men demand explanations and keep me talking about it for hours… terrible)

Of course, as you know, I rely on luck to find him so that makes it more complicated. And I don’t have much time. But sometimes I get lucky and we end up alone and together for a long time. Last June when we had dinner together would have been perfect; I mean, I did try – the intense hug, which he didn’t return. Last September when we had that fun random day would have been good, too. I tried to piggyback off that, too, but he wasn’t receptive or even very respectful. If I don’t get lucky, if we don’t have any encounters like that soon and time runs out, then I’ll ask him to meet me somewhere.

Do the good moments feel great? Not anymore. After the impromptu guitar lesson I cried myself to sleep and spent most of yesterday in tears because I was trying so hard not to let myself feel the joy of feeling his hands on mine for the first time. I know that these things are much more important to me than they are to him.

Well, I don’t know how good my frame of mind really is right now; I haven’t been able to stop crying since the impromptu guitar lesson. I think I’m really starting to accept reality and the reality is very hard. Halloween is also tomorrow which is hard for me… two years ago, we had this intense encounter on a Halloween and it’s very bittersweet for me to remember it. Especially now that I understand that it didn’t mean what I thought it did.

Anyway. Do you guys think I ought to tell him I love him before I tell him that I’m moving away or vice versa?