Lately, I’ve been missing you. In moments when I’ve wanted to scream. In moments when I wanted to laugh. In moments of quiet, of silent introspection, when I’ve wanted to escape, when I wanted to remain. In moments when I needed the advice of a sound unbiased mind. I’ve wished I could call you, or maybe just send a text. I wanted to say things that only you would understand in the way that only you could understand.
You were my me on the outside of me. My mirror extroverted. You were so many of the things I always wanted to be. So many of the things I’ve always struggled to achieve. A half of me that fit in shape but which magnetic forces pushed away. Were you the positive charge and was I the negative? Or was it the other way around? In the end, we were both two negatives. I think maybe I just grew weary of having to spin every time for you.
Were we inevitable? Was there always a beginning to our end and an end to our beginning? If we’d seen the end coming, would it have stopped us from moving forward?
We had both been in that place. That dark, cold and lonely place. And all either of us wanted was a hand to hold. Someone to turn to and say, “This is a dark, cold and lonely place.” Someone who would know as much as you knew what that dark, cold and lonely place looked like. We lived and thrived in that darkness. We damned it, and still, we clung to it. Hand in hand we floated, swam and trudged through that dark, cold and lonely place.
And then I got out. I don’t know if you’re still there, but I’d like to think eventually you got out, too. I think maybe you resent me for leaving you there, and at times I wonder if I did something wrong by leaving you there. Should I have waited for you? Wouldn’t it have been nobler to stay there with you? At the time, I hardly knew I was getting out. I felt myself drifting somewhere as if carried away by a current. All I knew was that I was tired of the weight, the heavy breathing of that place. I had to go. I knew you weren’t going to follow even if I asked. I think you believe you’re made of that darkness. That it sustains you. I think I believed it of myself, too. Until it hurt just to be alive, and without even knowing where I was running off to, I ran away.
I know that when I miss you, it’s not you that I miss but that connection we had. That telepathic connection where you knew exactly what I was thinking, when I was thinking it, how I was thinking it, why I was thinking it. The way you accepted my darkest thoughts without judgment. I miss being understood on such a metaphysical plane.
Things to you always just were what they were. It was admirable yet disheartening, the way you never really seemed to care. I was walking a tightrope of validation, reveling in your ability to turn cold and yet fearing it all the same. That which I found marveling about you is what finally pushed me away.
I know that we can never go back. And I don’t know where you are, but going back would only bring all that darkness back. I’m afraid I’d start spinning for you again. That I’d lose myself again. You were always such a powerful force, and I’ve always struggled just to give way to my own voice. I still struggle, but I fight to be heard. Either I’d lose myself to you again or I’d fight you to hear me out. One of us would still end up walking away.
I’m my own mirror now. It’s my own fractured reflection I tweak now. I’ve mended so much and there’s still so much to go. I don’t need you, but at times I miss you. And even though I’m that person that always needs to know where every path will lead and what the purpose of everything is, I know there’s no point in saying it — except maybe it’s just a cry my soul seeks to make out into the hollow void where only souls can be heard screaming for something physical that they can’t understand…
And that is that, after all this time, sometimes I miss you, and whether that’s good or bad, it just is.
