Right now you’re probably sitting in your old desk job — typing, grinding, and answering phone calls with such fake enthusiasm. Up until this very second, I still wonder… how are you able to like something you never loved. I used to think that maybe it’s a skill you’ve grown to develop. Maybe you just get used to it over time. Or, maybe it was what people told you to do while growing up — and you just blindly went for it.

But I guess I’ll never know the answer. I’ll never get the explanations that will satisfy my curiosity, because now you’re having a wonderful life that’s completely different from mine. Now, you’re enjoying the day in a different time zone, under a bright, cloudless sky, in a city that always makes you feel secured.

I guess I’ll never learn anything about you anymore. I’ll never see you throw your fist in the air when you cross-off your short term goals. I’ll never witness that sweet little grin of yours as you open the door of your car and drive home with great big news. I’ll never hear your chunky voice that bounces off the room every time you announce your latest achievement to your friends.

I will never get the chance to congratulate you, to tell you that all your sacrifices and hard work were worth it, to put my hands in your face and say to you how proud I am.

Perhaps the hardest part about seeing you succeed is knowing that you won’t recall me being part of it. You won’t stop for a moment and think of me. You won’t whisper “Thank You” after my name and wish me well wherever part of the world I am living at the moment.

I know that you have moved on without me. And I know that this is the part when I should be doing the same thing. This is the part when I should be urging myself to stop asking people about you, to stop figuring out what you’re doing, to stop making you the centerpiece inside my heart. This is the part when I’m supposed to feel victorious, because every time your face flashes in my mind — I don’t feel anything at all.

Today is supposed to be the time of the year when I can declare to myself that I no longer have love for you; I no longer ache for you. And even when loneliness visits me at night, you’re not the one I’m wishing to have beside me.

This is the part when I’m supposed to say that I am bolder and fiercer and wiser. This very second is when my heart should be free from any bitterness of losing you. My skin is supposed to be clear from any trace of your touch. And I’m supposed to be healed by time right now.

But I am not. Because I choose not to. I choose not to let my thoughts drift away from you. I choose not to kill your character in my story, because a part of me hopes that you will re-appear, you will come back, and you will double the happiness that you gave me before. A tiny part of me believes that distance is only testing my love for you, trying to see how far can I go, checking if I’m strong enough to handle the agony of waiting for you.

Maybe I’m a fool for holding on to these special feelings for you, after all these times. But the thing is I’m not yet ready to lose the beautiful memories that we had together. I can’t let go the positive things that you brought in my life just yet. I don’t want to throw away the details of your face out of my heart. And as much as possible, I don’t want to let my mind remember the truth that the reason why you left in the first place was because of me.