Dear,

It is quite an odd thing for you to live so prevalently in my mind when I never harbored any real feelings for you, years past. Our relationship, if you could even call it that, was simply physical, though I won’t lie and say I didn’t enjoy your presence for the couple of months we saw each other. In fact, it’s still very peculiar for me to think about the impression you left on me despite our menial timeline. Life’s funny like that; it’s always the people you least expect. Take it as a compliment, I guess. 

Writing about people, especially about someone who, from the outside, probably didn’t think much about the time we spent together (“together”), always feels somewhat violating, like I’m breaching some privacy threshold. But in my humble opinion, it is always flattering to be someone’s muse, at least when it’s in a positive manner. 

You were always a question mark to me, a person with unsuspected depth, which, I think, is why I was drawn to you back then and to be frank, even now. It’s curious because even after my earth-shattering, mind-altering heartbreak, you were the first person I reached out to as some sort of romantic lifeline. Maybe it was because I felt comfortable with you, maybe it was just a cry for help. I still don’t know. I can’t quite explain it because I still don’t believe I know you well enough, understand you well enough, to even label what I feel as a genuine emotional connection. Maybe it’s just some ambiguous interest in who you are as a person that will continue to haunt me for the rest of my life. I’m not sure that I will ever find closure on this cryptic feeling. I’m not sure if I will ever need to. 

I also never imagined that I would ever be writing about you. In this way, too. For me, the subjects of my creativity have always revolved around pain and love and loss and life as I know it. I haven’t experienced any of that with you. Definitely not pain, nor loss, nor love. So what is it then? The chances of you actually reading this are quite slim, if not non-existent, and anyone who isn’t you probably thinks I’m crazy. But there’s always some sort of madness in creating art. There’s always some form of primal need to create, a desperation that is only fulfilled by expressing yourself in a way that is truly personal. So here I am. There is not much about what I think and feel that isn’t put onto paper, so why should this be any different? Maybe I’m just delusional. Maybe this is a healthier coping mechanism. Maybe. Who’s to say?  

I wish there was some sort of equation or formula that gave me a concrete explanation of why some people stay and some people don’t. I wish I knew why, as another example, someone I never met in 2019 still crosses my mind often. I wonder why a relationship I had from my teenage years, someone I built an honest connection with, rarely exists in my brain. Idealization has to be the answer. It’s torturous to continuously dwell on what could have been, what I could have experienced with someone who slipped through my grip. Perhaps that’s why you prevail so comfortably in a pocket of my thoughts. Maybe if our time wasn’t cut short by my meeting the person who I thought was the love of my life, we could have endured something beautiful too. Or maybe if we continued down the path we were on, it would’ve imploded on both of us.  But that’s the funny and unfair thing with life: we will never really know. Not unless the diverged paths we’re on were meant to come back together somewhere down the line after we have both grown some. 

Now, I’m not trying to communicate some sort of loss or heartbreak from this rapport we had, nor am I confessing any type of undying love for you. I’d be lying if I didn’t wonder if you thought about me from time to time. Not in a yearning way, but simply out of curiosity, because if it wasn’t obvious enough, I definitely do. I’m writing this all at the risk of coming across as an obsessive ex-person, or whatever you may have it, but I can’t help that this is my medium of expression. It’s all out there for anyone to see. Don’t read too much into it. Life moves on, and so will I. 

Wherever life takes you next and wherever I end up, I’m glad that our paths crossed.