If you do not hear from me, this is what my radio silence means.

It means that I love you so I can’t. Can’t tell you. Can’t burden you with my feelings. Because you do not feel the same way. Or maybe you used to but that love has expired. Dissolved into thin air. Faded with the passing of time.

You used to react to my bold confession with a beaming wide grin or a shy smile across your blushing face, you used to exclaim enthusiastically back how you love me, you used to squeeze my hand and hug me tightly to show your appreciation, you used to say how I was your pillar of support and strength, now all you feel is heavy guilt and responsibility chained towards me.

You no longer love me or want to be with me.

Your eyes shift down looking at anywhere except me and when our gazes meet, I have to will myself not to flinch away at the blank nothingness there. When you speak, the words are carefully crafted and diplomatic. As if we are conducting a business transaction. As if you are trying your hardest to do the right thing. To let me down easy.

And because I love you, because I love myself more, I will not tell you how much you meant and still mean to me.

If you do not hear from me, it means that I am too afraid to tell you how I really feel. It may be too late now, but I knew right from the start that you were everything I wanted. You still have all the qualities I admire. The steely determination to go after what you want. The crystal clear vision you have for your future. The compassion and kindness you have to do the right thing. You are still all that I dream of and I am utterly crazy over you. But for some reasons, you always feel so out of reach. So out of my league. I feel that it is delusional of me to think that you will ever want me back. I feel that it is all a one-sided unrequited love of my part.

So instead of telling you, I choose to let the words die.

If you do not hear from me, it means that I want you too much for it to be safe. Your words curt and cold cut me like a knife. Your inconsistency lights an uncomfortable flame inside me that threaten to destroy all that I hold dear. Your ghost of a smile haunts me as I realize bleakly how much I have grown to care for you. So I decide I am done. Done caring. Done idealizing you.

Done breaking my own heart to want someone who won’t want me back.