The letter I never meant to send
What text would you send right now if there weren’t any consequences?
Note: to have a little context to today’s story, you might want to read the prologue,
Every time I feel like I’m not in control of my thoughts, I write.
Among several other reasons, I started to find comfort in writing here ever since I no longer had you to read them anymore.
Maybe, somehow, a part of me wishes you’d find this blog. It fulfills the need to express my emotions and updates on life, without opening another door to false hope or promises with you or anyone new.
It has been more than halfway to a year since we last spoke. I don’t like to recall how many months it has been, but my past self would have never thought I’d reach a point where you’re no longer the first person I thought of telling whenever I have good or bad news.
I finally had days, or even weeks of not having thoughts about what hurt me or what we could have been. I reflected on my feelings and realized I had romanticized the idea of you; there were certain traits and beliefs that we didn’t align with, many of which mattered to me the most in finding a life partner — but I was insecure, attached, and naïve, thinking I could change the only straight guy I was closest to fit my mold.
I know it sounds a little selfish, but I don’t know if I miss you or I miss the role you played in my life. I miss having someone to talk to about the most mundane things: a tiramisu I queued for nearly three hours but wasn’t worth it, an embarrassing moment at work, how tiring the commute back home was, or a controversial tweet worth discussing. I miss having podcasts with you and listening to stories about your life, but I definitely didn’t miss being told about the things you did that didn’t align with my personal values, or the fact that I ended up knowing most of it through other people after we stopped talking.
Today, the dust and crumbs of these memories came crawling back because, somehow, by some random chance, I unintentionally met one of your high school friends.
It’s funny how we’ve talked about this moment before, what we would’ve said about the other if we bumped into someone that the other person knew. But it didn’t play out the way we had laughed about it then; I briefly told him we used to be close, but some things happened, and we no longer talked to each other.
I don’t know which upset me more: how his name sounded familiar because I remember you mentioning this friend in one of our conversations but he had no idea who I was, or that the last memory I had of us felt so bitter that I didn’t want to hear anything related to you — because it reminded me of how easy it was for you to carry on with whatever happened, and how worthless it made me feel.
Despite all the deleted chats, I still remember glimpses of stories about your high school friends. How your friendship with them is pretty low-maintenance; you don’t need to talk to them every day, but you know you can always make a conversation out of anything with them for hours. How one of them would drive to your house to pick you up and hang out no matter how far it was from their place. How you used to have this tradition of having an all-you-can-eat sushi feast with them every year on the fasting month.
But all this information about you is like cache files now; it’s the random leftover files your computer still keeps even when you think you’ve deleted everything only to find out they took up most of your space. They’re residues I probably should have disposed of, but maybe they’re still sitting around because my brain thinks it might be useful one day.
There were moments when I was on the verge of texting you, but I couldn’t bring myself to unblock you because that meant I had to restart my healing progress if it worsened everything.
It took time for me to accept that maybe, no closure is closure.
I’m not interested in having things back the way they were, because I don’t think they can ever be. There were too many moments of trying to define the lines between friendships and romantic relationships, blurred expectations, and broken boundaries.
I hope you don’t have to feel the pain I felt.
The wound you left is no longer as painful, but it just still feels a little sore for a while when something triggers it.
I hope there’ll be a time when I can experience love more than the way I expressed it to you then — and maybe that’s when I know my wound is fully healed.
