Some loves last a lifetime, others as long as they were meant to.
I know that we could’ve been something incredible and perhaps the best thing to happen to either one of us. But we didn’t. Instead, a combination of life, physical distance, existential crisis, excuses, and hesitation crept in and pushed us just far enough apart for other things to come in. For other priorities. For other people.
It didn’t fall apart all in one day, but sometimes it feels like it did.
One moment, you were the only person who I could think about — the one who kept me up at night with your words and conversations, the one who took up so much space in me. The next, you were still all I could think about — but this time it was wondering if I should’ve tried harder to hold onto you. You were still keeping me up at night — all the words I never said haunting me and almost having me spill them all out to you far too late for them to matter anymore. You still took up all this space in me — and then left the gaping hole behind once we stopped talking to each other.
Life did go on, though. It has a funny way of doing that — choosing to keep moving forward even when part of your world feels like it stopped. So we both moved forward, too. I started a different path, and I honestly was happier with it than I expected.
“Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I’m gazing at a distant star. It’s dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe the star doesn’t even exist anymore. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything.”
When really good things happen, I still think to tell you. When certain things happen in my life that I know only you would really understand, it takes everything in me not to send you a message. I still wonder about your life and how things are going for you. I think about reaching out to you more times than I would admit, but I don’t.
Because for one reason or another, we didn’t fight to keep each other in our lives. We didn’t try to save whatever we had from the damage that inevitably appeared; we chose to let the ship sink. No one can point fingers and assign blame. These days, we live lives without each other, and perhaps it’s for the best. But we don’t need to see how the other is doing now that we know that we aren’t part of the picture.
For me, even after all this time, it would be too hard to hold on and try to keep you in the forefront of my life, although sometimes there is nothing I want more, and so I let go, because I am too scared of falling into pieces again. It would be still too hard to watch you move on with somebody else, even if she makes you happier than we would’ve been together. Slowly, I have developed this new instinct for avoiding the emotional rollercoaster you could start in my soul. So I control myself, I keep my feet on the ground and I eliminate any visual stimulus, no pictures, no social networks, no hidden digital stocking. This is what they call self-discipline. This is what I call self-protection.
I know that in the end, it doesn’t really matter why we lost the paradise that we once built so carefully together. All that matters is that I still want all the best things for you: to find someone who loves you better, to be successful in your passions, to live the live you always hoped you would, even if I do not want to be around to see it.
So believe me when I say that it is better for us not to be friends.
But it doesn’t make me miss you any less.
Originally published at psiloveyou.xyz