That's who I see. That's who I've always seen.

I have ADHD. Not the version people manage and medicate and apologise for. The real one. The one that feels everything at full volume. That sees people. Really sees them. The essence of them. The real version hiding underneath the one they show the world. It's relentless. It's exhausting sometimes. But it's me. And it makes me see things other people never will. Feel things other people keep at arm's length. Build things other people only ever think about.

It's a gift and a curse. The gift built something worth millions. The curse is not being able to let go of you.

You know something about that. Showing one version. Being another.

I walked into Pump two years ago and I saw you and something hit me. I didn't know what it was. I didn't know you. I just felt something I'd never felt before. My brain locked on and it never let go.

Not because you're fit. Not because you're pretty. Because something deeper was coming off you that I couldn't explain.

You had the biggest gap of anyone I've ever met. The woman you show the world and the woman underneath aren't the same person. I saw both. And I wanted the one underneath. The real one. The quiet one.

Your eyes give you away every time. There's something behind them that the rest of you is trying to keep quiet. I see it. I've always seen it.

The one that gripped my high five harder than she needed to. That locked onto me through the glass at the water station looking haunted and exhausted and wouldn't look away. That stared at me from two feet away and wouldn't blink.

I don't know what this is for you. I know what it is for me. And I think you know that something's here that neither of us knows what to do with.

The way we can't even talk to each other anymore. Everything loaded. Everything nervous. That's not normal is it.

I felt you before I knew you. My body knew before my brain caught up. When I touched your shoulder in Blaze it wasn't planned. My body moved towards you because it recognised something in you that matched something in me. I didn't think about it. I just reached for you like you were already mine.

And you didn't pull away.

I've never said all of this out loud before. Not properly. Not all of it in one place.

But I need you to know what's real. Because we've been circling this for two years and neither of us knows what to do with it and I'd rather say it plainly than keep pretending that Saturday morning small talk is enough.

All of it was real. Every moment. Every look. You know it was. You felt it too.

And while I was feeling all of that my brain was building. Because that's what the ADHD does. It takes everything I feel and turns it into something real. It can't sit with wanting. It builds with it.

After you said what you said seven months ago I flew to Dubai and started building something on my phone on a sunbed. Seven days. Because one door closed and my brain opened a different one.

That's what I was trying to show you. Not to impress you. Because it came from you. Because every late night and every line of code had you underneath it. And I wanted you to see what you'd started in me.

You're in procurement. You evaluate value for a living. And you stood there and couldn't see what was standing right in front of you.

And I think you know why.

I wanted you. The real one. The quiet one. The one nobody else has ever met.

I know this is a lot. I know I'm a lot. I've always been a lot. But I'd rather be too much for someone than not enough.

I just don't want to keep pretending I feel nothing on a Saturday morning. And I don't think you do either.

I needed to say it. Properly. Once. Before I become just a guy you used to know at the gym.