To The One I Never Met, But Still Cared About Deeply

By

When I matched with you online I wasn’t searching for anything. I just wanted to see what was out there. I was happy being single and discovering myself. I didn’t imagine kissing anyone or sleeping with anyone. I didn’t expect to connect with you the way that I did. You said all the right things. You didn’t judge and let me vent. You became a person whose name I liked seeing pop up on my home screen.

I started to imagine how it would be having movie nights or binge-watching a series together. I imagined having adventures in your car, road trips listening to your music, and mine. Talking and sharing like we do over text.

I chose to be different with you, I chose to try. I chose to wait. I chose to make excuses for you as to why you didn’t want to meet with me. I chose to be transparent, blunt, and raw with my feelings and expectations at the expense of feeling crazy because I was doing too much for someone I might never meet.

I keep asking myself why you didn’t just ghost me or tell me to back off. I don’t understand why you kept talking to me even after I texted angry words to you because of my own insecurities. I don’t understand why you kept leading me on and told me you were interested. I don’t understand why you were not as frustrated as I was that we couldn’t be together in person.

Why did you let me go on texting you and telling you how much I wanted to meet you so I could stop imagining things? I wanted to know. No- I deserved to know how you actually were.

I let myself be crazy with you. I let myself be honest, be clingy because I wanted so bad to see it through. I can’t keep myself from wondering what your intentions were. But in the end, I drove myself insane and I just needed to walk away. I needed to let go of the illusion of love over text. I needed to stop imagining and start accepting reality.

To me, you’ll always be a what-if, an illusion.

To you, I might not be even a thought but if this were the old days, you’d be, be, simply, a pen pal I fell in love with.