I’m Over You And I’m Not Over You

I remember how I used to laugh to myself every time you wanted me to write about you, because wasn’t the whole set-up obvious? You were every word that came out of the tip of my poor, inky pen – the one that you gave me on my birthday. It was the pen that seemed to write more whenever I was frustrated about you having always been oblivious to what I feel.

Or felt. I don’t know. I think it’s all still there, masked by my apparent emptiness. I mean, how could it ever leave?

Ever since you left, I’ve always found myself torn between using past tense and present. I guess that says a lot, how I still seem to find myself longing for what’s already gone and, at the same time, how I crave to live in the now. And the thing is, you’re no longer part of it.

I haven’t been really sure of things ever since I lost you, and lost the opportunity to tell you all this personally. Because I never managed to gather up the nerve and voice out these thoughts to you. The certainty is gone, and I’m in the process of finding it again, please trust me. Although every time I pack my notebook and my favorite pen to search for what I need, I find myself writing about you, when I should be planning what lies ahead for myself.

I find myself including you still, as if you’ve never left, like you never went away, as though you will show up sometime in the future and make me believe that my expectations of the world haven’t completely died on me. And in that moment I find myself lost, in a daze perhaps, wondering if in another world I’d see you looking for me too.

It’s become a reflex by the way, a need, a way to satiate my hunger for what’s already been devoured by time. And before time eats another useless hour up of me moping around and crying over this, let me say that it’s always been about you, and I am pissed that I can’t get rid of this nasty ink, goddamnit. 

Because all it ever functions for is when I write words that are the color of your eyes, or when I write about the touch of your hand that I’ve never really felt, but have always wanted to. I still want to, but all these reasons are getting in the way, and you know me. I don’t deal with what’s already complex, because aren’t I one complication of simplistic hopes and dreams?

And you’re you, you think like me. I’m pretty sure you know my fears even if I don’t say a thing — fear of rejection and of not being what I want us to be, and of failing to be the one who makes you smile at three in the morning because of what I must’ve had said three months back. I know that you know, and that’s what scares me.

Instead of confronting this fear the way I’d always told you I would, I resorted to letting you be, to letting you take your path on to unintentionally leaving me and leaving what we could be. Because that was the easy way out of your life, I thought. Or the easiest, most subtle way to let you know that I love you, goddamnit. There’s no euphemism for something as cheesy as that, and I’m not complaining because I’ve hidden it all for so long now.

Jesus, how much you’d laugh at the way I’m complaining about life’s discrepancies again without you – that’s what I’d like to know. But I’m telling you my feelings right now, the ones I’m soaking up at one in the morning when I’m supposed to read my books.

My feelings are not like the pen you gave me. It’s not poor, nor is it an inkblot of thoughts any longer. But I’m telling you again, it’s exactly the pen you handed me — it was a goddamn favorite, but unfortunately it now yields useless. It used to be with everything I’d ever hoped for, but now it’s nothing and empty. It’s who I am and what we truly are, so I guess this is where I have to stop complaining.