Learning to live a life I never wanted
There is a version of my life I never wanted to become familiar with. A life without you in it.
And yet, here I am.
I wake up, go through my days, attend to my responsibilities, laugh at things, make plans, and carry on as though everything is where it should be. I have learned to function in a life that once felt unimaginable to me. I have learned to live without the conversations, the little updates, the familiar presence, and the comfort of knowing that somewhere in the world, you are a part of my everyday life.
I suppose that is what time does. It doesn’t always heal things the way we expect it to. Sometimes, it simply teaches us how to coexist with what hurts.
I have learned to live with your absence. Not because I have finally made peace with losing you, and certainly not because I have stopped wanting you around. I have simply learned that life does not wait for us to catch up with our feelings. The sun still rises. The days still pass. Work still needs to be done. There are places to go, people to meet, and responsibilities that do not disappear just because someone we wish were beside us isn’t there anymore.
So, I carry on.
But every now and then, in the middle of an ordinary day, something reminds me of you. A song. A passing thought. Sometimes, there isn’t even a reason. You simply crosses my mind, and suddenly, I find myself wishing.
Oh, how I wish you would come back.
Not necessarily with grand gestures or some extraordinary explanation. Sometimes, I imagine something as simple as a message. A hello. A how-have-you-been. Something that would remind me that perhaps I haven’t become a complete stranger to someone who once meant so much to me.
I wonder if you ever think of me, too.
Does something remind you of me the way certain things remind me of you? Did you ever hear a song and pause for a moment? Did you ever find herself wondering how I am doing, what my days look like, or whether I still remember the little things?
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I wish you did.
I wish you thought of me as much as I think of you. I wish there were moments when my absence crossed your mind, even briefly. Not because I want you to feel the same longing or sadness, but because there is something deeply human about wanting to know that you still exist in the thoughts of someone you haven’t stopped thinking about.
Perhaps that is the hardest part: not knowing.
Not knowing whether you completely moved on, whether you occasionally look back, or whether the memories we made have become nothing more than distant fragments of a life you no longer thinks about.
Meanwhile, I am here, learning to live a life I never wanted.
I have stopped expecting every day to bring you back. I have stopped looking for reasons to reach out. I have learned that sometimes, loving someone quietly means allowing the silence to remain, even when every part of you wants to break it.
But if I am being honest, a part of me is still waiting.
Not in a way that prevents me from living, but in a way that leaves a little room for the possibility that our paths might cross again. That perhaps, someday, life will surprise us. That perhaps there is still a conversation waiting to happen, somewhere beyond all this silence.
I don’t know if you will ever return. I don’t know if you misses me. And I don’t know whether the things I still hold close mean anything to you anymore.
And maybe those are two entirely different things.
I am living. I am moving forward. I am learning to be okay.
But if life ever gives me the chance to see you again, I hope you know that somewhere along the way, despite everything, a part of me never stopped wishing it would be you.
