You May Not Love Me Anymore But I Still Wonder If You’re Okay

It has been three months since I last spoke to you or even heard from you. Those three months were long and consuming but necessary. You finally were completely eliminated from my life – I was happy about this for a long time. I was able to move on fully.

Slowly, over time, I began to think back about that realistically small portion of my life, I looked at the mini chapter and corner of my heart that you called your own. It was empty of course, what would I have expected.

After two months I started to realize your true absence in all aspects of my life. On social media, from mutual friends, from your family. People stopped asking me about you, they stopped asking me if I was still getting over you because I truly was. But this allowed so much to settle in past the initial shock and awe of a break up. I was grieving a wholly loss. And it wasn’t painful, but it was there.

So I started to question if I wanted to reach out, I would quickly stomp out the idea – disappointed in myself for feeling like I wanted to see how you were doing, what you were doing, if you were okay. I felt weak and pathetic for even feeling some sort of wonder, knowing that I would be scolded by many for allowing communication with you. The next day I wouldn’t even think twice about contacting you, because I had stored other, temporary boxes in your former corner and taken white out to the mini chapter I had previously cataloged for you.

But one day I was especially lonely, feeling hopeless and broken – more than a cracked cup, less than a shattered mirror. This sudden emotional wreckage wasn’t because of you. It was because of life, change, missing pieces. I am not saying you are my missing pieces but it got me thinking that you too are human, you too have feelings, you too went through a hard break up. I didn’t want to hug you, or feel bad for you, or feel sympathy for you but I wanted to genuinely ask you how you were doing. I realized you’re a human who once knew me like a language. You felt me like lotion, all over, within. And even though you acted like you didn’t know these intricate parts of me in the end. Even though you broke my heart, I still saw you as a human being. I still wanted you to be okay even though I wasn’t what you needed. You deserve happiness and peace as much as I do, because what you did was honest and real.

What you did was what YOU did, because it was what YOU needed to do. I advocate for individuals to be selfish in their twenties but I shunned you for just that. I wasn’t seeing you as a human being, I was seeing you as comfort only I could benefit from. I wasn’t your comfort – and I’m okay with that.

What you did was the right thing for the both of us and I truly believe that. Although at the time I didn’t accept it. You didn’t do it out of spite, you did it because you were listening not just to what you needed but what I needed. It has been brutal to realize that what I needed the most could only be conceived through the rawness of pain and sudden change that comes from dissolution of a relationship – both platonically and romantically in our circumstances. You were gone completely.

I know now some people will come into our lives and learn our bodily syntax like a love language, they will absorb into our skin like vanilla lotion, and then they might leave – they might not. We all have that choice because we are humans and we deserve the opportunity to advocate for ourselves especially when it involves love. Being on the other end of a choice is hard, cruel even. But sometimes the most important opposing choice is to allow something as delicate as the last remaining remnants of love to leave, for good.

I am a human being just like you. I have a heart, slightly scarred and partially healing, but it’s there and it cares deeply. You too are a human being, probably healing as well, but you’re there and I know you care. I know you feel, because I’ve felt you.

If what happened to our imploding relationship didn’t hurt, then I applaud you. But if it did, I just what to ask you one question:

How are you?