Letting You Go Was My Biggest Mistake

Last night, I laid in bed thinking about how I felt exactly a year ago, the day we got together.

Today, that pain feels even worse. I wonder what you must have been thinking hours leading up to you asking me to be your girlfriend. I wonder how you felt about me, and how you pictured me in your life. I wonder how nervous you were when I clutched onto you tightly as I fell asleep in your warm embrace, with the promise of our future together hanging in the air.

I wish I could tell you how fast my heart was beating, and how good I thought you smelled. I wish I got to celebrate your 20th birthday with you, baking you a cake like I joked I would and singing you a song I told you I couldn’t sing for the life of me. I wish I was there for you when you lost your job and drank your heart out, from what our friends told me. For fuck’s sake, I wish I’d done everything in the world with you.

All these words I never had the opportunity to say to you. A thank you, an apology, a well-deserved declaration of love. You were really too good for me. Maybe my lack of trying was a good thing. For one, it showed you how much you truly deserved and how lacking I was. Two, it taught me to never take love and affection for granted. I honestly thought I’d be okay letting you go.

But that was my biggest mistake.

However, I’ll try to take comfort in the knowledge that you’re probably better off without me now. No more toxic girlfriend to waste your time on. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked at old photographs, cried reading the cards you wrote me and re-read the text messages you sent me for hours on end. I’ll never stop thinking about you whenever I drink peppermint tea, the first drink we shared, or whenever I wear caps, because you were the one who told me I looked cute in them.

I’ll always remember that feeling I had when I first met you. Like something exciting was about to happen. Like that wasn’t the last I would be seeing of you. Our awkward first meeting, which turned into a laughter-filled “date” as you called it, which led to the happiest days of my life.

I miss the feeling of holding your warm hand, intertwining my short fingers with your long slender ones and sitting your lap. I miss you picking me up in your arms, making me feel like a princess. No one else has had that effect on me.

I’m afraid all these memories will fade, that I’ll forget the feeling of your warm touch. That’s why I try so hard to relive those days, to pen down the moments so I would never forget them. It’s all starting to feel like a dream, as if we didn’t once mean the world to each other.

I should have fought for you. I shouldn’t have been so impulsive, leaving your broken heart in my wake. My heart screams to see you again, but I’m too ashamed.

Group outings with mutual friends give me more than enough opportunities to see you again, but I just can’t bear to see your indifferent face again, to know that you’ve moved on, but I have not.

One thing’s for sure. I’ll never be the same again.