The Things I Should’ve Said To The Guy Who Should’ve Stayed

Four years ago today, I met this guy who made a difference in my life. He made me feel special in more ways than one. So we hit it off. It was as if we were made for each other, a match made in heaven. As time goes by, I started thinking he was going to be my forever person.

I promised myself that I would treasure him, respect who he is despite our differences, and never let him go. I thought I was going to enjoy looking at his face, caressing a handful of his tousled hair, and admiring the way his lips shape up a crooked smile a little bit longer.

Or maybe even keep wondering about the cold stares he sometimes has for others, as if he was trying to build walls that will cover his soul, and yet he looks at me as if all that there is was love and admiration. I felt I was the luckiest girl in the world. The first time we dove into deeper conversations, I knew he was afraid to fall for me. But then in two months time, we became leaves in the wind, falling fast to the ground. We came off from different branches but we are breathing as one.

I was the first girl he fell in love with. And he was my greatest love. Everything we had was a fairytale. Until I realized that happy endings were not a thing anymore and we were caught up in that fleeting moment. I never knew that the love I thought would last is destined to fall apart. And just like every fleeting moment, ours has to end. It wasn’t the lack of empathy and trust for each other that shed our downfall.

It was our inability to act upon the feelings we had due to distance. Years have passed and I still miss him so bad. We had to cut off all connections to help ourselves begin again. But then, the more we stop communicating, the more my feelings grow. There are so much left unsaid. I’ve always been the one who is notoriously emotional. What can I do?

I’m just a fragile girl who fell in love—who has to suck in all emotions she feels because she’s afraid people would judge her for feeling too much. However, inhaling all these toxic emotions make me sick. It kills all the fluttering butterflies in my stomach. Thus, I need to find a way to remove all these venoms off my skin before I poison myself. Somehow, I managed to cease my unending stream of consciousness about him through writing.

I have to admit, I still want him back. But it’s already humiliating, annoying, and exhausting. Because whenever I try to reach out—to beg for him to stay and face the challenges with me—he would just push me away. Instead of catching up with him in the chase, I tried to drain my emotions by way of writing too many anecdotes about him. But too much will never be enough.

After all the things we went through, after all the verses and poetry that I’ve written about him and got tired of, I still have a few words for him:

“It’s really messed up. What we are right now is irreversible. We couldn’t turn back the time. So even if you ignore me a million times, you won’t be able to take away the regrets that I have. Even if we move on with our lives and find someone else, I’d still wonder what it’s like to be with you instead.

That’s why I still think about you. To be honest, I still consider seeing you somewhere in the future. Maybe I’m smitten by you—maybe my feelings are starting to fade away. But who cares? It’s not about the future.

It’s about the present, holding on to what we have while it last. And if you feel guilty for leaving me behind, I want to tell you that I’m okay— perfectly fine. You don’t have to worry about me and help me move on. I have my ways. I’m just afraid of the day when I’ll finally get over you and not even spare a single thought about you in days, weeks, months, or years.

Because it’s not about losing you that I’m scared of…you can leave anytime you wish and I don’t have a say in that. But it’s losing you in a way that I’ll completely not care about you like we were strangers again and I was the one who initiated it. It would feel like I betrayed myself—letting go of the man I thought would be mine forever.

Maybe you don’t think this way. Maybe you’ll find this too dramatic. But I’m just being real because I don’t want to have too many regrets in my life, especially when it’s failing to express myself to someone special to me.”