The Blonde Choch Next Door

Chapter 21 - Dear Logan (Pt. 2)

**FLASHBACK**

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Screw it. I am in love with you, ok? I can't f*cking pretend anymore. I didn't ask for this to happen, you know? It just did. So here I am, sitting at my computer, typing this sh*t because it's the only place I can express it. I have this weight in my chest, this physical thing that is dying for release. But it's fucking stuck there, with nowhere to go. I can't just call you on up on my phone, and confess how I feel. I can't even send you a letter in the mail because I don't know where you live. (And if I did, I wouldn't even know if you got it.) God, I can't even send you an email. Believe me, I tried. I sent this nice letter to the maverick shop email, hoping someone would see it the same way your dad saw that email about Kong. But nope. No response. No anything. I mean, it's possible you did get it, that you have read it—I'd just like to think that you would have said something about it if you really did. I poured my heart and soul into that note, same I'm doing for this one. I'm literally giving myself up to you. That's scary. Have you ever felt that way before?

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Logan,

​Just writing your name feels strange, because you don't even know mine. Actually, you don't know anything about me, except that I'm the kind of person who would write you a letter, whatever that's supposed to mean. But I do know who you are. Or at least, I know the you that you have put out on the internet—the thing I blame for knowing someone who doesn't know me. Because social media has allowed that—for me to watch your YouTube videos and follow your Instagram page, all the while to you, I am just another 'like,' another view, another subscriber. The numbers continue to grow, (as they always do), on your channel, (this probably makes you fist pump mentally), in a way that both excites and frightens me. I'll never forget the vlog you made as you were about to hit 10 million subscribers; you tracked the current number on your TV, except it wasn't just a number, it was a moving number. And as I watched that moving number grow at a pace I could hardly keep up with, I thought about how hopelessly lost I was in the void of all those millions of fans. My single subscription to your channel is in the larger scheme of things so small, whatever meaning it has to me buried beneath hundreds and thousands and millions of clicks of a button. It made me wonder. Will you ever know who I am? Will I ever exist in your mind as a physical person, or will I become condensed to only a number? It's hard to think about. But this I will give to social media—it gave me you. In whatever unconventional, inconceivable way—it gave me the ability to be a part of your life, even though we are miles away from each other. And, most importantly, it gave me, you gave me, the ability to remember how to feel happy. Because I forgot, in the midst of going to school and pretending that I have my life together, what it felt like to simply enjoy life. And you reminded me, and continue to remind me every day, that the simplest things can do that for a person, as long as they are doing what they love and are following their passion. (I strive by your motto: I work hard, but I never work.)

It's no secret you inspire me. That you have the moment I saw you on camera. I fell in love with the way you embraced the things that made you different, the way your presence was magnetic without trying to be, and how totally unforgiving you were of the raw parts that made you yourself. The truth is, you and I, we're probably completely different people. But somehow, that's ok. You make that ok, because what you say and do on your vlogs is funny to me, and it's funny to you, and in that way we share something. I know that when you film your vlogs in L.A. I'm not actually there, that you have no idea a 21-year-old girl who still listens to Neil Diamond, eats chocolate even in the morning, and loves long walks at night is watching them—but I'm sure you've thought about it sometimes. I'm sure you've at least tried to imagine your fans—whether it's what they look like, if they eat cereal in the morning, or if they live in a place you don't even know how to pronounce.

Either way, I hope someday that you'll know I'm here and that I've been here, and that I am real, because right now everything feels like a secret. I feel like a secret. More than anything, I want to laugh with you until we both can't breathe, I want to skip down the streets of Hollywood with you for no reason, I want to dance to music in the middle of the night just because, I want to say your name not because I know you from the internet, but because we're friends. I want all these things that are so impossible I can't believe I'm writing them down.

But that's also why I am writing this letter. Because I hope that someday my dreams may not seem so impossible after all. I want you to know that you make me so genuinely happy—your positive, upbeat energy is nothing short of infectious. No matter how much of a show you put on for your videos, or how many times you call yourself a blonde choch from Ohio, I know there is a softer, kinder side to you that will always be there. I know it, your fans know it, you know it. Hold on to it, embrace it, love it, because in the midst of everything else, that's what truly makes you, Logan Paul, a Maverick.

-Oliver