You Are There, I Am Here. Again

To the one I thought I was finding my way to,

The last time I wrote about you, I was happy.

I wonder if you remember that girl.

The one who had started singing again. Who carried your sleepy smile into the ordinary hours of her day. Who found herself looking forward to tomorrow because somewhere in it, there would be you.

I wonder what she would think of me now.

Or perhaps, more painfully, what she would think of you.

I wrote about the distance between us as though it were the only thing keeping us apart.

I didn't know there was an entire life between us.

A life someone else had spent years building with you.

Four birthdays. Four summers. Countless ordinary mornings when someone woke up knowing you were hers. Little arguments forgotten over dinner. Familiar silences. Plans made without the slightest suspicion that one day, they might become memories too painful to revisit.

And there was me.

Falling for you in the spaces between all of that.

I wonder how many beautiful things can exist inside a lie before they stop being beautiful.

Because I remember everything.

And that, I think, is the cruelest part.

You called me.

You forgot to disconnect, and I chose not to.

For ten minutes, I listened to a world I had never been told existed.

I heard you tell her you loved her.

I heard you comfort her, worry about her, speak to her with the kind of tenderness that makes a person feel they have somewhere to belong.

And I sat there, holding a phone that had suddenly become heavier than anything I knew how to carry.

Your voice was the same.

The same voice I had waited to hear.

The same voice that had made the miles between us feel almost imaginary.

Only now, it belonged to a conversation in which I had no place.

Isn't it strange?

How a voice can make you feel at home one day and homeless the next.

I wish I could say I hated you then.

But I didn't.

I was listening to you love someone.

And all I could think was how terribly beautiful it must have been for her to have been loved by you for so long.

How terrible, too, that I had been made to believe there was room for me.

Today, I spoke to her.

And I don't think I will ever find the right words for what it felt like to see her cry.

There are some faces we recognise without ever having seen them before.

Hers was one of them.

Because years ago, I had worn that same bewilderment.

I had sat with tears running down my face, asking questions that had no answers kind enough to make the hurting stop.

Why me?

Was I not enough?

What was so wrong with loving someone that I had to suffer for it?

I remembered the desperate arithmetic of heartbreak. Counting everything you gave, everything you forgave, everything you believed, trying to understand how a love so full could leave you feeling so empty.

And there she was.

Another girl, in another room, in another part of the world.

Asking the questions I had once begged someone to answer.

I wanted to hold her.

Not because I knew how to make it better.

But because I knew there was nothing I could say that would.

And then we brought you into the conversation.

She asked you one question.

Just one.

"Do you love me or not?"

And you said no.

I wonder whether you understand what happened in that moment.

Perhaps, to you, it was simply an answer.

A word.

A truth you had finally decided to speak.

But I watched a girl hear it.

And I wondered how a single syllable could reach backwards through years and make someone question every beautiful thing that had happened to her.

Where does a person put all the love that is no longer wanted?

What does she do with the mornings she remembers, the promises she believed, the future she had quietly begun to call hers?

What does she do with all the versions of herself that loved you?

The girl who met you.

The girl who trusted you.

The girl who stayed.

The girl who, even after everything, was still hoping you would say yes.

And how do you tell her that none of those girls were foolish?

That none of them deserved this?

I kept thinking about those ten minutes.

The way you had said you loved her.

And then the way you said you didn't.

I don't know what happened to your feelings between those two moments.

Perhaps nothing happened at all.

Perhaps you had been uncertain for longer than either of us knew.

But I wonder how love can be spoken so tenderly and withdrawn so easily.

I wonder if you know that the person hearing you may spend years trying to reconcile the two.

I looked at her and saw the girl I had once been.

And for the first time, I was grateful that I had found out before I had given you years of my life.

What a heartbreaking thing to be grateful for.

I had imagined meeting you.

I had imagined the first time there would be no screen between us, no distance to complain about, no goodnight that meant returning to separate worlds.

I had imagined the warmth of finally standing beside you.

I hadn't imagined that I would meet another woman first.

Or that she would show me something about you I had never wanted to know.

I wish things had been different.

I wish you had been the person I thought you were.

I wish I could keep the beautiful parts without remembering what lay beneath them.

But memory is a strange thing.

It doesn't stop being tender just because the truth becomes unbearable.

I can still remember your smile without smiling myself.

I can still remember how happy I was.

And I think there is a particular kind of grief in having nowhere to put the love that was beginning to grow.

It wasn't old enough to have a history.

But it had already begun to imagine a future.

And now I have to mourn things that never even happened.

The conversations we never had.

The places we never went.

The mornings I never woke up beside you.

All those small, impossible tomorrows.

I don't think you know how much I wanted them.

But wanting something does not make it right.

And loving someone, or beginning to, cannot mean closing your eyes to the pain they have caused another person.

I cannot hold your hand while knowing what hers looked like when she was reaching for an answer.

I cannot become the happiness that follows her heartbreak.

Not because I think love must always last.

Sometimes it doesn't.

People change. Feelings fade. Two people who once imagined growing old together may one day find themselves wanting different lives.

But there is a difference between falling out of love and leaving someone to discover that you have been living another life behind her back.

She deserved the truth before she had to ask for it through tears.

And I deserved to know that your heart was not free before I began making a home for mine in it.

I don't know whether you will ever understand that.

Perhaps you will.

Perhaps years from now, something ordinary will remind you of today.

A familiar voice.

A question asked too quietly.

Someone trying very hard not to cry.

And perhaps then you will remember what it means to be trusted.

I hope you do.

Not because I want you to hurt.

But because I hope you never make someone feel this way again.

And despite everything, I still wish you happiness.

I know that may sound strange.

Perhaps I should be angrier.

Perhaps I will be tomorrow.

But today, I cannot bring myself to wish you anything terrible.

I just wish you had been kinder.

To her.

To me.

Perhaps even to yourself.

I hope the life you build is one you never have to hide from the people who love you.

I hope you find a happiness that doesn't require someone else to question her worth.

But I don't want to be part of that life anymore.

I don't want you to choose me.

I don't want to hear why.

I don't want to wait for the version of you I loved to come back and explain the version of you I met today.

I think I have heard enough.

The last time I wrote to you, I told you how the distance between us was beginning to disappear.

You were there.

I was here.

And somehow, I had begun to feel that we were moving towards each other.

Today, I am looking at those same miles differently.

I no longer wish they were fewer.

I no longer wonder how long it would take to cross them.

And perhaps the saddest thing is that nothing has changed about the distance at all.

Only what I wish to find at the other end of it.

I will miss the person I thought you were.

I will miss the little happinesses.

I will miss having someone to tell when something wonderful happened, and knowing that somewhere, far away, there was a person whose voice could make an ordinary day feel extraordinary.

But I will not miss wondering whether I am being told the truth.

And I will not mistake missing you for a reason to return.

I hope she heals.

I hope one morning she wakes up and the first thing she thinks about is something other than you.

I hope she laughs without remembering what happened.

I hope she falls in love with the world again before she ever has to think about falling in love with another person.

And I hope, someday, she looks back at the girl who asked you that question and understands that there was nothing shameful about wanting to be loved.

As for me, I think I will be all right.

Not immediately.

There will be songs I cannot listen to for a while.

Little things that remind me of you when I least expect them.

Moments when I will miss something I know I cannot have.

But I was a whole person before I met you.

I had a life full of small wonders.

I had dreams that didn't know your name.

And I had a voice that knew how to sing long before you gave it another reason.

I think I will find my way back to all of that.

One ordinary morning at a time.

You are there.

I am here.

Again.

How strange that the same words can hold two entirely different kinds of longing.

The first time, I wrote them wishing there were fewer miles between us.

This time, I write them hoping they remain.

And for the first time, I am not asking the universe to bring us closer.

I am asking it to be gentle with the hearts we leave behind.

Including mine.

I wish you a beautiful life.

I just don't wish to be in it anymore.

Shallu