When They Ask Me If I Miss You

When they ask me if I miss you my first response is no.

I’ve moved on. I’ve learned to live my life without you. It doesn’t pain me waking up anymore. My head doesn’t jolt in whatever direction of someone saying your name.

I don’t miss you.

I did.

I learned what missing someone was like and how it could hurt to a point where you become a version of yourself you don’t even recognize. I learned what it truly felt like to watch someone fall out of love with you. It’s this helpless feeling and you completely lack understanding of how it happened or what you did to deserve that. I learned what rock bottom actually felt like. I learned very quickly how none of us are immune to depression if love is in the picture. And how it’s almost normal to feel those things so heavily when a relationship ends.

I learned what it was like to lose yourself to someone else.

I learned what it was like to try a little too hard.

I learned about compromising my self-respect trying to get someone to stay.

Like my role was to convince another person that I was worth it.

It was in those moments of such despair that I learned about who I wanted to be rather than who I was.

So when people ask do I miss you, I say no.

Because I don’t miss the person either of us became at the end of it.

The part of you I miss was the version of who you were when you loved me.

The part of you I miss is the life we had together.

The part of you I miss was waking up every day like you were the best thing to have happened to me.

There are parts of you and me I miss. And as much as I would love to say I wish things didn’t play out like they did, that’d be dishonest too. Because it was in losing you I found myself again. And it wasn’t even finding myself but rather having to learn what it was like to be my own person without feeling like an extension of someone else.

Do I miss you? There are some days but something I’ve come to learn is mourning a past relationships or mourning who two people used to be will never change them from who they are now to who you wish they were.

If a relationship outgrows you or you outgrow it, you’ll find how fast you ruin yourself trying to fit the mold of who you each used to be.

It’s not easy to just move on. Feelings of pain and heartbreak are completely justifiable but you should know outgrowing a relationship or getting hurt watching someone outgrow you, isn’t the end.

It’s the start of finding someone even better.

Sometimes the people we love and care about, the ones we might have thought could have been the one was really a stop along the way to someone better.

It’s impossible to see that in the beginning. But the love you deserve isn’t one that will hurt you, then return, realizing the mistake. The love you deserve won’t have to make that mistake in the first place.