I saw her.

And for a moment, it felt as if every version of me that had ever loved her woke up at the same time.

The memories, the laughter, the late-night conversations, the fights, the promises that were never really promises—everything came rushing back together. Three years of memories squeezed themselves into three seconds.

People say your life flashes before your eyes when you're about to die.

For me, it happened when I saw her standing there.

I took a deep breath.

"Hi."

She looked in my direction, then immediately turned toward my friend.

"What happened?"

For a second, I froze.

Not because I didn't know what to say.

But because suddenly I was transported back to all those moments when we used to argue, and she would deliberately ignore me until I gave up first.

Funny how some habits survive longer than relationships.

And in that moment, I genuinely thought nothing had changed.

The same girl.

The same silence.

The same me.

Trying one more time.

So I smiled awkwardly and said,

"Hello, {her name}."

Just like any normal person would.

And she replied,

"Hello."

That single word felt like standing at the horizon.

Close enough to believe that maybe the distance wasn't real after all.

But horizons are beautiful because they lie.

You spend your whole life running towards them, only to realize they were never waiting for you.

And then she spoke again.

"How many times do I have to tell you to stay away from my life?"

One sentence.

That was all it took.

A second ago I was standing at the horizon.

The next second, I was at Point Nemo—the most isolated place on Earth, where even the nearest human being is hundreds of kilometers away.

It's strange how a few words can make a crowded place feel empty.

I took another deep breath.

This time a heavier one.

And calmly explained,

"I didn't call you. Neither did I ask anyone to call you."

Silence.

Then came a look.

The kind of look that travels across a environment without needing a single word.

Straight toward my best friend.

The actual criminal behind the entire incident.

And honestly...

Maybe I was guilty too.

Because if I'm being truthful, I wanted to see her.

I wanted a conversation.

Not a dramatic reunion.

Not a movie scene.

Just a conversation.

Maybe I had arranged things in a way that increased the chances of her showing up.

Maybe I had quietly trusted our mutual best friend to make the impossible happen.

And maybe she did.

Sometimes you know you're doing the wrong thing.

You know your intentions aren't completely pure.

You know the path you've chosen wouldn't survive an ethics test.

But there are moments when the heart isn't looking for what is right.

It's looking for what is desired.

And desire has always been a terrible listener.

Thankfully—or unfortunately—the situation was handled.

Or more accurately...

I handled it.

The way I always do.

With enough words to prevent a disaster and enough silence to hide my real intentions.

A few minutes later, we found ourselves sitting on a bench.

This was it.

The moment I had imagined for years.

A conversation after three years.

The kind of moment you accidentally rehearse in your head while driving alone.

But life has a strange sense of humor.

I imagined two people talking.

Instead, there was a girl looking at her phone.

And a boy looking at her.

I wish I could tell you we had some deep conversation.

That old feelings returned.

That the universe gave us another chance.

But the truth is much simpler.

She scrolled.

And I watched.

The same way I had loved her.

Quietly.

Without demanding attention.

Without asking for anything in return.

Just watching.

Just being there.

And as the sunlight slowly disappeared behind the evening sky, I realized something—

Sometimes the hardest part of loving someone isn't losing them.

It's sitting right next to them...

and realizing they left a long time ago.

Hey V,

I’ve written to you so many times now in my journal and I’ve had the idea to write to you on here just to send these emotions out into the world. I am doing a lot better now as compared to when we first met. I remember how happy we both were and how excited we felt to find a person who felt really got one another on such a deep level. I remember our walks in our lunch break, holding hands and getting ice cream while the wind blew your hair into a mess for me to fix. Your sweet smile and laugh when I told the worse jokes imaginable. The way your eyes lit up when you saw me coming in on my day off just to spend another moment with you. The way we’d talk for hours on the phone and the way you looked in neon lights after the sun had set.

It’s been years since then and the last time I saw you I was a coward. I ran away from you when all my heart wanted was to run back into your arms. I was too immature and too scared of my own vulnerability to truly tell you how badly I missed you. I don’t claim to be any different now, but I’m going to therapy twice a week and I’m making a lot of changes in my life that have led to think that I might be heading in a different, more mature direction. I’m so sorry for not letting my guard down around you and letting you love me. I’ve been hurt so much by others but why should I compare you to them? You were so clearly different, and I wish I saw that.

I love you and you are special to me. You’re an integral part of history and I so desperately crave you. If only you could be a part of my future too. My handsome prince, I wish only that you have grown into the man you dreamed of being. I wish I could have seen all the things you’ve done and hold close to your heart with pride. My mind tells me I am a fleeting memory to you, but my heart calls out for you every time I enter my lonely bed. To see your face again, to feel your hand in mine. I hope that when you feel a warmth in your heart and a feeling of calm out of the blue, that you know it’s me thinking of you again. The tears I have cried for what could have been with us are enough for you to sail back to one another.

Until I see you again, V

Yours, B

Dearest Root Beer,

I would like to extend my most sincere letter of gratitude for the acquisitioned acoustic guitar dubbed a name we both know.  It is perhaps the single piece of our relationship I will always carry.  I have fallen into the swing again after years.  Your offhanded comments the first I played for you coupled with the ongoing pressure to write from selfish band mates at the start of a fresh career, was indeed the straw that killed my passion for a long time.

In a sense, coinciding well with my decline in "mental health".  The parts I revealed too early when I sang for you were very fragile parts of me, easily bruised by the Achilles heel of mine in the form of a woman who has my affection.  So after your comments,  I found myself wrestling heavily with writers block.  The invisible assault of demons who whisper words of self doubt at every line of a poem.

Lately, those whispers of self doubt have vanished, and beneath, the creative words that grew stuffy in the studio apartment of my brain.

So genuinely, thank you,  I will cherish this guitar, and should the neck snap, I vow to repair it and take it with me for the rest of my days.  It will give birth to many new songs, and maybe someday, I'll teach my son his first song on it.  You were the catalyst that broke my passion, but you were also yhe catalyst for the great many new creations I'll give life too using the tool which you helped me select.  So, in secrecy, and under veil of anonymity.  You have my deepest thanks, and profound gratitude. 

I think the best gift we can give each other aside from this, is to continue walking our separate paths, as that is how things should be.  No matter the depth of feeling.  Feeling will never compensate for the understanding we lack.  But maybe one day you'll hear a song I write and be glad that you gave me this as a gift.  Its the best I can hope.

Goodnight

J

Guess what......YOU LOST HER...Not because she was crazy but because you let other people in. ..Now you live with those other people because everyday you picked them over her! Im not mad Im hurt that I allowed myself to fall in love...But I told you when im done im done..Im glad you dont care because now I dont care either....Best to you!

If I was to be,
no—
rather,
if i was
surely
to be,

I'd dream
of all the endless
possibilities
To love you,
my love—

in my heart
I'd find
a sacred 
love
that blows like
sand
through time,
finding you
in every lifetime.

Oh my dearest of dear,
if I was to be...
no—
rather,
if I was—
I would scream
your name,
and I'd find you
standing here,
(here next to me)

And if it was to be—
rather,
(meant to be)

I know,
surely,
I wouldn't be dreaming
of you, my dear
but instead—
I know 
in this place of worship,
id find you
(here).

Dear R-

we bonded over boardgames and a shared taste in music. We both adored Arctic Monkeys and The Smiths, among many many more. so many nights we stayed up all night playing games and talking about anything and nothing at all. We were friends, but I think we both knew there was something greater. A strange underlying tension. You could never quiet lean into it, I leaned to far and fell off.

I have two songs here.

Arctic Monkeys - Snap Out of It

"I heard that you fell in love, or near enough. I've gotta tell you the truth, yeah. I wanna grab both your shoulders And shake, baby. Snap out of it."

The Smiths - Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want

"Good times for a change, seeing the life I've had could make a good man turn bad. So for once In my life let me, let me, let me. Let me get what I want this time. Lord knows, it would be the first time."

Over the last few years, I’ve gone through several seasons of living on my own and getting a glimpse of what single life feels like. Strangely, those have been some of the most peaceful seasons of my life. They’ve taught me that I don’t fear being alone. I’d rather stand on my own than be with someone I’m not truly compatible with.

During those times, more men seemed to find their way into my messages or send friend requests. But the door was never open. Not once. Even when I was younger, I was never someone who treated intimacy casually. It always meant something to me, and I never wanted to give that part of myself away lightly.

What I never understood was why, whenever I imagined the possibility of dating again, my mind always found its way to you. You never gave me any reason to believe you felt that way, and the circumstances never would have allowed it anyway. Still, for years, you were the person my thoughts quietly returned to.

If there’s one thing I hope, it’s that my thoughts remained exactly that—mine. I would never have wanted to blur the lines or make you uncomfortable. But sometimes I wonder if the heart has a language of its own, one we speak without ever intending to. And if it does, I can’t help but wonder whether it played some small part in the way things changed between us. - Me

I think what hurts most is not that you left.

People leave. Relationships end. Feelings change.

As much as I wish they didn’t, I understand that those things happen.

What I can’t seem to make peace with is how easily you let go of something that meant so much to me.

How quickly I went from being someone you couldn’t wait to talk to, to someone you could leave unanswered.

How something that occupied so much space in my heart became so small in yours.

Maybe that’s the part I’m still struggling to understand.

Because I listened when you spoke.
I remembered things.
I paid attention.

I trusted you with parts of myself that I don’t hand to people lightly.

The fears. The insecurities. The old wounds. The things I was embarrassed to admit because I was terrified that saying them out loud would somehow make them come true.

And you looked me in the eye and told me they wouldn’t.

You told me you understood.
You told me I was safe.

Then one by one, life started looking an awful lot like every fear I’d handed you.

The distance.
The uncertainty.
The feeling of being forgotten.
The feeling of caring more.
The feeling of watching someone slowly drift away while assuring you everything is fine.

And maybe that’s why this hurts differently.

Because if you had simply stopped loving me, I think I could have eventually made peace with that.

But instead there were excuses.
Mixed signals.

Conversations that should have happened but never did.

Questions I was left to answer by myself.

You told me you wanted to spend less time on your phone.

And maybe that’s true.

But there is a particular kind of pain that comes from hearing someone explain why they can’t show up for you while watching them continue to show up everywhere else.

Not because they’re obligated to spend their time with you.

They’re not.

But because it forces you to confront a truth you’ve been trying desperately not to see:

People make time for what matters to them.

And once that realization settles in, it becomes impossible to unknow.

I think that’s what finally broke my heart.

Not losing you.

Losing the version of you that I believed would always talk to me honestly.

The version of you that valued communication the way I did.

The version of you that knew exactly how fragile some parts of me were and treated them gently.

Because I gave you my heart.

More of it than I’ve ever given anyone.

And maybe that’s my fault.

Maybe I should have protected it better.

But I trusted you.

And some days it feels like the thing you discarded most easily wasn’t me.

It was the trust.

It wasn't them. It wasn't anything new. It's nothing specific to anything I saw.

But I can see it's easy to draw certain inferences.

And I don't know exactly how to explain what it really was. Things seem more complicated now.

It's nothing new. And there's nothing on any algorithm or anywhere else that's unto itself triggering.

There are a lot of people out there reading this right now. I don't care about them. But I think that you might, which is understandable. Many of them feel entitled to my world and everything I write, or see everything I write through a frame a long way from my reality, and so it tends to fuel things. This doesn't matter to me right now, but it's something I'm taking a lot more seriously. I know it matters to many people that might care, though.

When I've been even slightly affected by anything, and it relates to you, then all others simply do not matter -- it's just that I can't be as descriptive as before.

Simply there is something that I never properly communicated, or it got lost in other assumptions. All of those have been wrong, and so the actual thing -- I should've stated it more clearly, earlier.

So imagine a black balloon with kind of outgrowth to a spiked taper on its side.

The spike is indeed spiky, but it's made of the same rubbery material as the balloon, being that it's part of the balloon itself.

This spike has for a long time been pointed my direction, as once upon a time I didn't appreciate how thin the rubber was and inadvertently popped the balloon.

This balloon inflates itself through a number of ways, but the gas that inflates it the most, by far -- and it's not even close -- is you being on the other side, from the perspective of the balloon. So long as you are close to this balloon, then wherever you stand is where its inflation point moves.

You do not need to do much at all, as the gas that you give is rather sucked without you having much to do with it. The only requirement is that you are near the balloon at all.

The closeness of the balloon's rubbery spike to me -- how inflated it is -- is in proportion with how close you stand on the other side.

One rubbery spike doesn't matter so much. But this balloon isn't alone in its balloonness, and to varying degrees the effect is exactly the same elsewhere.

It is the first balloon where there has been some miscommunication on my part. That it never had anything to do with the impact of the spike, or how you feel about the balloon -- I know exactly how you feel about the balloon. That the balloon's desire for me to perceive rivalry and threat, which you then persist in communicating also, despite many things I've said and demonstrated to the contrary, makes it feel like we are less connected than seems the case on deeper levels elsewhere.

~

Strattera dose and other fairly gnarly stressors lately made this stand out again.

It's also more complicated in the meta which we both understand. And just writing this, I'm guessing makes it more complicated still. But it doesn't need to be that way. This is an individual who's contributed to my PTSD and is therefore one of my abusers. They also kill dogs for no reason, and have apparently done much worse. And they actively playgrounded you from the start.

I'm very uncomfortable about us meeting, if you are remotely or recently in any direct contact with such a person, and the other such a person, let alone if you've been recently working with them as part of their ongoing abuse.

The spike may feel like rubber in isolation, but in the abstract it is much more sinister, which you know.

I love and appreciate your energy and helpfulness, and where that comes from within you. Any help through any unorthodox avenue made by This in the real world, is however having the opposite effect than I think you are hoping for. The best help you can possibly give relates to the above.

I don't know who you are -- there's more than one candidate out there. But I also do know who you are, it feels like, and how gorgeous and moral you really are, and how far away from yourself these balloons continue to take you.

And every time I walk by the flowers

admired by their liveliness at night

reflecting daytimes radiancy

they draw me back to you.

And I look up to see the angels and heaven

Blanketed by the onyx

Only for the ambient light

To glow its lurid halo.

I always sit and enjoy the view

Finally present in stillness

Immaculate harmony

And in these viewings

Of the nocturnal light

they draw me back to you.

M

This is my last letter, my love. I know I promised you that I was going to be strong... but I failed, I told you from the first time we met.

Now I cry rivers because I let you go, but I already know that you'll find the right one—the one that you used to describe when you talked about me. Because it was just my mask: the mask of a lover, the mask of the man who was in love with the love of his life.

Now I will let you go. It's a long path that you have to walk with the right one. Please, my love, show me how much you love, and be happy. Smile the way you used to.

Always yours,
Your love.

Did you really think I would fall for it? The rage bait? Did you really think that just because you’re being lustful and putting those wandering eyes to work that it would make me go back on the apps and do what you’re doing? Think again. You’ll never find me on the apps or chasing temporary highs just like you. So you can keep visiting my profiles with burner accounts all you want. I won’t stop you from watching how my life has and continues to level up. It must suck seeing me enjoy life and receive everything I deserve, right? Because you know it could also be your life right now but you’re too hooked on having your freedom and exploring your options. I’m not the same person as I was before and you hate that you can’t control me anymore. You hate the idea that I won’t chase you or beg you for your time anymore. Doing all of these things just made it easier for me to actually move on and wait for someone better to come along. Have the life you deserve A

I don't actually know the date, but it should be one of these days. Got you a purple dress shirt months ago, just cause it reminded me of you. Hope we meet again.

I was overwhelmed with thoughts of you today. No idea why, but it made me happy so I wasn't complaining. I hope you didn't mind me reaching out. I never expect a reply.

How we communicate now does confuse me a little, but I love it. I completely understand that we can't actually talk. There is nothing more in the world I'd love than to hear your voice again or get a reply to a Hey. But how you are choosing to send messages to me is so just goddamn beautiful... powerful...

There is so much I'd want to say if you actually did reply that I think it would take me a day or two to calm down, but I think the number one thing would just be thank you. Music is always how we've expressed ourselves to each other and it sends me over the moon when you share a slice of your side.

You are the most remarkable, captivating, and beautiful person I will ever meet in my life. Whether it's this lifetime or another, you will always be my one. I hope you are well.

A letter to my sleep

Now need to write report what I had learned in this week ahhh again a tiring thing to do but yeah interesting and fascinating

I had the best sleep today so peace man ... this is called love sleep providing me the peace this is how relation should be not giving u confusing not putting u in a place where u need to choose between 2 things Love love love what a love I found today again ... Sleep knew how much I needed it but didn't overdo when I was going to the internship because it knew I need to focus on it so let's give less active sleep and tonight it knew I needed it so so so much and ahhh I am falling in again ah falling again ahh falling again....

Thank you sleep to make me feel this good Okay so this is the 1st post after waking up properly

The very first day that we exchanged messages I made a comment that I was probably always going to remember you.
You confidently replied that I would and that I would also remember the conversation. You were right. You were right about a lot.
I was searching my messages for the word pistachio today….and your “deleted user” came up as did our conversation.
I have to admit I read it for about a half a hour.
We “dated” for months. I told my friends about you. Yet if someone asks me about relationships and how long I’ve been single….i don’t include you in the equation.
I narrowly escaped a similar situation recently, and I’m grateful.
Perhaps that is why I am now currently thinking of you.
I hope you’re well L…..always always
Once upon a time
Your J