Midway

Never in my life would I have imagined hearing from you first.

The day before, I came across a video of you on Instagram, which made me pause for a second longer than I was supposed to. I just wondered if you were doing well, and hoped you were. I didn’t think much about us after - thinking about you is something that I tell myself not to do everytime.

Then came the dream, which I no longer remember but I know my heart ached that morning. And then your name appeared, in a single message, asking how was I. I didn't know how to feel - shocked, confused, happy, sad - I felt everything all at once.

How am I? It’s a question I ask myself almost everyday. I answered truthfully: fine. I really am.

And then we decided to meet.

I knew it wasn’t a good idea. At least everyone tells me it wasn’t a good idea. What good would come out of meeting when we haven’t met for 4-5 years? But I just had to know.

Know what? I don’t know.

We laughed. I cried. We laughed again. It was bizarre to be honest. We talked about the past and I was surprised at how much you remember. We talked about what happened after we broke up. We talked about what we want to do in the future.

At that point I was just happy. Happy that we could talk like we used to. It didn’t feel wrong and it didn’t feel awkward; it just felt overdue. Like I had lost a dear friend and we were just catching up on our lives.

It’s all still very hard to explain and I think I will never be able to find the words for it. But it reinforced some things that in my head I already knew:

I am just not the right one for you.

I mean I always knew, but somehow it’s still hard to swallow. I knew how you felt because I thought you were the one for me, so for you to know so strongly that I’m not the one - I know what that means.

I have moved on. But maybe not completely.

It didn’t hurt when you told me some stuff that I thought would crush me. Maybe it was because of all the time I had to tell myself those things were gonna happen sooner or later, or just because of time itself. It didn’t hurt to hear from you all the things I already knew. As for the moving on part, I guess a part of me always knew I never really moved on completely yet. In fact after a while I accepted it because it just seemed like such a long time, the fact that maybe there's always going to be a part of me that loves you. Then again I may wake up one day and feel absolutely nothing.

I’m still far from loving myself.

I guess this is the main problem. Maybe if I find myself everything will be okay. Maybe then I can really be happy.

Despite all of that, thank you for not being a stranger.

//

Where the light shines and the pale sunset glows
Across a sheen of pale pink and blue hues
We sat in quiet reminisce of the days of our youth
And I, trying to grasp the concept of time
For everything in retrospect seems evermore bittersweet

- to all that we had

// now it's time to wake up.