An Epiphany: I Miss You

As painful as the circumstances turned out to be, I am writing you this letter to set myself free.

To you, the friend I left behind:

“My family is moving away,” I told you quietly. You froze. You didn’t speak. Finally, you looked at me and asked, “Why now?”

I did not know what to tell you. I do not know what to tell you even after all these years.

When I attended university, I told myself I wasn’t going to be good friends with anyone, let alone be attached to someone. Then there you were. You were an exception.

You were a completely different story.

You looked at me as if there is rare beauty within the walls I built. You touched me as if I were delicate and strong at the same time. You wanted to be next to me even if I felt like the rest of the world did not want to. We used to sit in silence in an empty hallway after class hours. We broke the silence by speaking about our fears and our dreams, what keeps us up at night and what keeps us sane. We spoke with truth and honesty, but the only truth we did not speak of was how much we were hurting because of the limited time that we had left together. I wish I told you. I wish you told me. But a wish will not do anything. We did not even have the chance to say goodbye.

I can’t remember when we stopped talking, nor do I want to. What I want to remember is how happy we used to be. You and I enjoying the afternoon together, playing the guitar, singing, dreaming, laughing, crying. We did not care about time. We spent hours and hours talking, from sunrise to sunset. We were each other’s confidantes.

What happened? What went wrong?

Maybe it’s the distance. You are 11,138 kilometers away from me; I am 6,921 miles away from you. None of my assumptions matter now, or maybe they still do and I’m too terrified to acknowledge it.

I dream about you sometimes. We are in an empty hallway, silent. Only now the silence would not end. I still hope that someday it will.

An epiphany: I miss you.

During those times we were starting to drift apart, it was as if you were a paper boat that was slowly floating away. I wish I asked you to stay, but I didn’t. I was too afraid, too much of a coward. I did not know what to do but to pray and hope. I wished on every single star every single night to move the current towards me so you’d float back this way.