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Dear You

Dear You

love rosie movie still

Dear You,

It sounds cliché but it’s true: You came at a time when I needed someone like you. Someone who makes me smile after a difficult day at work, someone who makes me laugh at some joke even after the moment’s gone, someone who makes me feel understood without having to explain myself, someone who makes me believe that anything’s possible…

…except you’re also someone who did all of these without meaning to.

Before you start being flattered or get self-righteous, let me burst your bubble: I never expected to like you. Ever. To be honest, it’s been a long time since I even liked someone. I was so used to being by myself that being single came as easy to me as breathing. I had intentionally avoided any opportunity to like someone because I knew that when things start to get real, one way or another, I will mess it up. With that, my every waking day had been devoted to faith, friends, family, and freaking work—all in the same order.

But then, things happened and life as I knew it got off track. I was having these petty LQs with God, because I feel like He never gives me what I want and what I deserve. Then, people not only turned their backs on me but also turned against me maybe because they drew lots, picked my name and said, “Hey guys! Our lives are so miserable right now so let’s all huddle up, list all the things we hate about her (me), and together, let’s make her life a living hell.” As if that wasn’t enough, my job didn’t want to be left out and made every day a struggle for me, too. Even my home, which what I thought was the only constant thing in my world, started falling apart before my very eyes.

My life was suddenly like sand in my hands. The more I tried to hold on to it, keep it intact, and save it, the faster the grains kept slipping through my fingers.

In the midst of this chaos, I met you. It may not be as much as I have, but you also have a baggage of your own. You were at the brink of a breakup, burnt out of your job, and wanted to do something new, something you are good at, something you like. One day, you just opened up to me. It was one of those nightmarish days and I just shut myself from the world and swore that I’d never let anyone in again. Someone who would find his way through that wall I built was the least I needed at the moment.

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Truth be told, you were my person and I felt like I was yours at one point. We allowed ourselves to be lost and fragile in each other’s eyes. No judging, as we used to say.

Now I know what our roles really were: distractions. Yes, we found someone who’d listen to our sob stories, someone who’d make us believe in silver linings, someone who’d make us feel we’re not alone – we found that in each other. But now that the worst is over and things are falling back into their right places, what do we still need each other for?

What do you still need me for?

As far as I’m concerned, your last message was two weeks ago…

…and I hate myself for checking Messenger every now and then until that darn chat window pops up because I let myself get used to the routine of talking to you every day.

I hate you for promising to take me out on a ride because the moment you did, I never stopped looking forward to that day. I hate you for taking a photo of yourself wearing the shirt I gave you as a send-off. I hate you for reading Nicholas Sparks’ novels and watching chick flicks because we ended up trading stuff for some time. I hate you for letting me see the view from your window whenever we talk about the weather. I hate you for taking random pictures of things I like even when you’re on the road. I hate you for believing me when I said I was a writer and that my number one is to finish a novel and get it published. I hate you for telling me that the reason I am single is because guys here are not so smart; for a moment, I believed you and felt good about myself. I hate you for concluding that the guy I’ve been actually looking for all this time is a country boy—like yourself.

I hate that we both like comfortable silences and beautiful landscapes. I hate that we’re both wallflowers and wouldn’t take each other’s word for it. I hate that we admit that we’re hopeless romantics, which really is just a glamorized term for a wuss. I hate that we’re two similar people living at different ends of the world.

I hate that I met you in my quarter-life, a point where every possibility gives you a feeling of a rollercoaster ride and every failure hurt like a sudden death. I hate that I thought there could be something, that we could be something, even though I knew it was a long shot. I hate that for a moment, I thought I could be brave enough to have the real thing if the real thing was you.

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Whatever we had would end eventually, I was a hundred percent sure of it. But that something, whatever it was, helped me pull through. You did not put end to the troubles, you did not solve the problems. Instead, you kept me going. The mere fact that I knew at the end of a very long day you’d be putting a smile on my face simply made the struggles a lot more bearable. As much as I wanted it to last, it was never my choice to make.

You were the temporary high I couldn’t get enough of.

Thank you for being the one to turn the page because I didn’t have the will to do it. Perhaps because of all the bad things that happened in the last few months, I wanted to hold on to the only thing that felt good. You said the right things, did the right things – all at the right time but not for the reasons I would have wanted.

No, I didn’t end up being your someone. Someone who makes you smile after a difficult day at work, someone who makes you laugh at some joke even after the moment’s gone, someone who makes you feel understood without having to explain yourself, someone who makes you believe that anything’s possible…

I was just someone who perhaps, in a way, had fallen for you without meaning to.

Now we’re back to being two different people at different ends of the world. I wish you nothing but a good life.

Yours,
Me

In an alternate universe, RavenEverAfter is fulfilling her wanderlust at an island, spending afternoons writing novels under a tree or drinking coffee on the porch. In reality, she is sitting at her desk as a senior quality analyst, paying her dues, and finding her way through a mess called quarter-life.

(Photo Credit: Love, Rosie, Canyon Creek Films)

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