It might not seem like such a big deal, or anything at all exceptional, or even positive. Perhaps, to someone else, it wouldn't be.

But you see, you make me question myself, and what I'm thinking, and it hits me like a fist to the face; that I have only ever known one other person who could inspire that kind of reaction in me. He appointed himself a brother to me; I was young, as young as I was when you and I first met. In a series of strange and upside-down lessons, he taught me - or rather, made me learn - about both who I was (and could be) and what a friend was (and, of course, what a friend could be).

Other people; I don't know how anyone else live their lives. I have always been the clever one. Any compliment paid to me has been to my intelligence and wit. My childhood's achievements, victories, were in knowing what others didn't, and knowing it a long time before they did. I have been bright, ambitious, resourceful and reflected.

I have learned that qualities such as the ones I possess often bring along with them arrogance and complacency; and detachment. I don't know how these other people live their lives, no - perhaps my detachment is universal, and not individual, but if that is the case, it counts among the things I haven't learned yet.

You make me question myself.

You inspire in me the wish to sharpen up, to perform better, to be correct, the desire to not only be better, but to be best. For you, I straighten my back, clean my glasses, and suddenly devote time to problem solving; to acquiring new knowledge; an activity I had forgotten I missed, as no kind of higher education managed to bring the thrill back, to inspire my need to prove myself, the way you do.

I am better for it. There are unpleasant side effects. I may spend too long evenings analyzing your behaviour - and mine. I may waver in my confidence, and, in the night, devote my big fat brain to questioning my performance, my brains, I may be given to the suspicion that I am childish and uneducated, stupid and lacking in eloquence, that perhaps I didn't manage to communicate my thoughts correctly, or perhaps I was simply not having the correct thoughts.

And it stings. I am not accustomed to this level of doubt. But I recognise that the doubt is like a missing limb; that I have needed this, and that I am better for it. I compare this sudden uncertainty to an arm suddenly alive and capable of reaching out; a leg no longer lame, reminding you what the ground feels like under your feet.

This is what you bring to me: ambition and focus - self-doubt and strange dreams. You make me want to be better.

And this is not love. Far from it. But if, to other people, love is both beginning and end, perhaps I have replaced this notion with ambition. No kiss I've known has ever compared to delivering an answer, confident that it's the right one.

You make me want to be better. That's a double sentence: behind what I typed, you can make out the traces of the one behind. You make me aware of the ways in which I am wrong.

So you speak to me, and I cannot reply. You say good evening, and I hear it, and I smile, pleased by your presence - and, at this point, your persistance - but my smile doesn't translate into words. For all you know, I am not here.

It's only one of the ways in which I am wrong. I have only been this silent once before - and that, too, was because of you. I'm so silent, so far-away, that I might well not be here at all.

You might not deserve the odd respect I have for you; there might not be any very good reasons why I should think of you as something above, something to strive towards and be equal to. What you are and are not is, I think, irrelevant; because my reaction to you remains the same.

And you might not understand the overwhelming absence I give you: to tell the truth, I don't even understand it. But I will. Because, at least if you remain persistant, sooner or later I will have found all the answers.