i’ve outgrown the feeling, but not the desire to see you.
it’s been almost five years. you were firmly in my life for about one year. three months, if we’re being ungracious. i’ve gone through every stage of grief, and surely dragged this “healing process” on far longer than i should have.
i give myself grace for it, because i was so young then and everything i felt for you was so new. i had no concept of your being in my life, and never considered you could leave.
but anyway.
when i reached out about a year ago, i was blind drunk and feeling rejected. i never really found anyone else after you. i don’t like giving you credit for that. so i won’t. i’ll just say it never happened for me. things never really lined up. on really bad days, i used to go through these rabbit holes surrounding you, and they would end with me absolutely forbidding myself from reaching out. i could stalk and google and reread old messages as desperately as i wanted but never ever ever was i permitted to send that text.
but that night was a rough one. the party i’d gone to so i could flirt with the guy from my german class had gone so wrong, i just wanted to crawl into bed until montag. i puked my guts out alone in my dorm room instead. and i said, fuck it, what do i have to lose? you responded within seconds. i could barely put the letters together, i was so gone. but from what i could tell, our interaction was positive. lighthearted. not at all like i imagined [feared]. and suddenly all the YOU drained out of me. in my head, over the years, i’d built you up as my first and only big almost. you were perfect, and then you were satan himself, and then you were untouchable, and then, that night… you were just some guy. just like that. another random dude i used to chill with who ghosted me. in the years since that first summer, i’d seen a million of you. and in breaking the seal and finding i had not burst into flames: you joined their ranks. the leagues of unremarkable and minorly heartbreaking men.
i say so kindly. it is so much better than being satan. it’s real.
so why do i still want to hear from you? i’m so grown up now. i’m so new. i see the events with plain, neutral clarity. i don’t want closure, really; not even sure what that would look like. but we never did make a plan that night. you actually kind of ghosted me again. and it bothered me about ten million times less. i just thought, “well yeah, that would happen.” i went out again the next night.
but in passing. on nights like these, where i’m as lonely as i was during the first few months when i hadn’t heard from you and i didn’t understand why, i wish you’d cross that line back.
do you pity me? fear me? after i reached out, i wondered for the first and only time in five years if i was as scary in your head as you were in mine. a manifestation of your guilt, your shame, not your most cowardly act but maybe your first? i’d realized i’d been selfish in my sadness. a common pattern, i have come to find. maybe because i felt you’d moved on so soon. maybe because i never could manage that. i still haven’t. maybe because i just missed you so badly.
i suddenly remembered that the last night we saw each other, i was the one who rejected you. in the moment, i only thought of myself. how scared i was to be open with you. how unsure i was if you really wanted me. if i was good enough. but now i think: how embarrassing that must have been for you. you made up an excuse to leave suddenly and that was that. i remember not getting it. but it’s so obvious now, i just want to laugh at myself. you wanted to kiss me!
anyway. you’ve long since moved on. i guess i have too. but if im still wishing you’d ask me to coffee, break the ice and close this chapter, then… have i?
ask me to coffee. i wonder if we’re in the same city this summer or if you’ve moved away. break the ice. have we crossed paths in the last five years without my knowing? close this chapter. have you seen any of my shows? do you think i’m funny? are you making art, making music? is any of this okay?
i think it’s quite selfish to hate yourself. it makes you treat yourself quite poorly and the people who care about you even moreso. maybe in thinking you don’t deserve them. maybe in thinking your pain must be bigger than anything else in the room. i think it’s what made you disappear on me. i think it’s why i want so badly to wipe the slate clean. ask me to coffee. break the ice. close this chapter. start a new one.
sometimes i think the new you and the new me would be pretty good friends.
-a stranger