How can you live as though our hearts didn’t once beat as one? Six years later, and the pain of unrequited love and loss still lingers. I remember the texture of your hands, and your crooked smile haunts my dreams. Do you remember the first day we met properly? I was sitting on the steps to the music room, crying for a reason I can’t recall. It’s funny, the things we remember and the things we don’t, right? Before that, I had known of you as the twin brother of one of my friends and one of the most intelligent boys in our class. However, for three years, we had been circling each other like repelling magnets, never really making contact until that day.
When I saw you approach, I figured I was busted. The lie was on the tip of my tongue—some flimsy excuse to explain why I was hiding away from the rest of the school when I should’ve been in class. But you just came and sat with me. You didn’t say a word, seemingly content to stare out into space with me and pretend I wasn’t having a breakdown in the middle of the fourth period.
It started slowly. We spent more and more time together, and whenever I spoke, you simply listened. Until meeting you, I hadn’t realized just how much I needed to be heard, and your presence became something I craved. There was a growing desire to have you closer—under my skin, in my veins, making your way to my heart to soothe it with whispered nothings. At the time, it seemed like you wanted something similar.
We were inseparable. Everywhere you went, I went, hand in hand. Soon enough, everyone started to whisper that we were dating. They were wrong, but we didn’t care enough to correct them. Then, one day, I watched you write my name and yours on your palm and draw a heart over it. At that moment, I thought: “This is it. He understands.” But apparently, I was wrong.
You started having girlfriends. You would always tell me about them, even though you didn’t go into detail. At first, I expected to feel jealousy at some point, but I never did. You didn’t have what we had with them. You were never theirs. Remember that time you had a breakdown of your own? You had a major anxiety attack and I recall that day being one of the scariest of my life. You thought you were going to die, so I thought so too. But underneath all the terror, I felt a new kinship with you. I now knew that you had experienced a bit of what it was like being in my head. “This is it,” I thought. “He understands.” As I would soon find out, I was wrong then too.
I can’t reconcile the you who used to give me your jacket all the time, talk to me about your darkest fears, and listen to me, with the you who never wants to see me again. I thought that I had found the constant in my life. The one who made the equation make sense. I thought I had found someone to spot me when I fall, someone to be my safety harness. But then high school was over, and you wouldn’t pick up my calls anymore. Why didn’t you respond? Was I not good enough? Did I do something wrong? Six years have passed, and I still wonder.
The only explanation I’ve ever gotten from you is the classic “It’s not you, it’s me.” Apart from that being such a lazy excuse it’s disrespectful, I know it’s a blatant lie. I know you’re not that busy. You have all the time in the world to hang out with your brand-spanking new friends. Do you think I don’t know? I see it all on Instagram, Twitter. There you are, finding time for all these new people, making jokes with them, forming bonds. But none of those people have been through what we’ve been through. None of them have what we have. Why can’t you see that?
You have ruined me. There is now a permanent hole in my heart that’s the shape of missing you, and I’ve had to relearn how to exist around it. I can no longer allow myself to get close to people. I’m terrified I’ll never be enough, and I can do nothing about it, so I leave before they realize I am not worth staying for. I don’t know if I’ll ever be cured of you or if I’ll ever stop seeing you in my dreams.
Sometimes I stay up all night wondering if you’re plagued with all this wistful remembering like I am. Do you remember those three years we spent hand-in-hand? Do you remember that one time we were alone in the chemistry lab? I had put two beakers to my ears and heard howling like you do when you put a seashell to your ear. “I think I can hear the ocean,” I joked. “Try it.” You took the beakers from me and put them to your ears and after a second, a dazzling smile split your face. A soft and pink smile, just for me. In that moment, I felt infinite. You were mine. All mine.
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