I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you. I hate that you had to change yourself to be around me. I can’t be happier that you’re doing much better. I wish I could change many of the things I did, but I know I can’t. I’m sorry I turned our last goodbye into me desperately trying to prove I’m fine without you— in trying to prove I no longer try proving, I proved myself wrong, lol. I’m sorry, yeah? I meant it when I said I wouldn’t miss us, but that wasn’t the whole truth. I wouldn’t miss the silence, the hurting, the running, the hiding, the pretending, and especially the lying. But I mourn the friendship we could have had now.
Sometimes I wish we had met much later instead, so I could finally, finally know you (I’m sorry I don’t know you, I can never be more sorry for it). I wish I knew myself when I met you, so that you could know me for who I am and not just my endless sorrows.
I want to think fondly of you, and I do, I really do, but sometimes it’s anger or sadness or that same strange old desperation I carried long ago.
I can’t go back and change the past, I can’t come up to you and talk in the present, I can’t see myself in your future or you in mine. I do wish I could pull you to the side and speak, have a proper goodbye, not over the phone but face to face, but our last day has passed and I didn’t do it. Even as I try now to do things, something in me stops when it comes to you. I guess it’s fear, of hurting you again, of finding out that I’ve not come as far as I think I have, of “losing” again.
I don’t want to put you through more of the past, nor do I wish to relive a single second of it. However, simultaneously,I want clarity and to give you clarity (even if you may not need it, or already have it)
I wish I could say something like I used to— I wish I could tell you how I “miss you constantly”, or “would do anything for you to come back”, but I don’t, and I haven’t in a while. But sometimes something happens and I think it’ll make you smile to hear about it, but then I remember that I can’t tell you anymore, and that I chose this for myself because even after we promised to “never grow apart,” I often felt as though I was still forcing things onto you. I was, am, tired of such a thing. I stopped messaging you and hoped that you would try speaking first— looking back, I should have told you head-on about how I felt— and we ended up just not talking for a while.
I’m straying off-topic, though I didn’t start writing this with a topic in mind.
Selfishly, I miss having you to talk to. I miss the British accent, the layered inside jokes, the side-eyes between classes, the absurd metaphors and references. Selfishly, I wish you had said something after I blocked you, which is foolish because I’d done it explicitly to stop myself from talking to you.
I’m sorry, Mari. I hope Ravi and Laila are doing well? I haven’t heard from them, nor you, in a long while.
Warm regards. Please take care. I love you, like the way I’d love a stranger’s good deed, but I love you regardless. I know nothing of you.
