i miss u
thu dec 4, 800am.
just realized today is my mom's birthday. maybe i'll give her a call.
i woke up this morning and for the first time in a while, i really miss my ex. i miss you, _____. that's hard for me to admit. it's been a year and a half. i should be over you. but every failed romantic fling brings my mind back to you. i miss your gentle smile, your shy giggles when i would tickle you, i miss how vulnerable you were with me and how your inner child would come out when we were together. i miss how mildly autistic we could be with each other. i miss curious conversations, the late night chats, the deep sex.
i even miss the porch catchups after we broke up. those would always go longer than they should've, and we'd blink and it would be 3 or 4 am, and one of us would decide it was appropriate to go home then. you were seeing someone else at that time. i don't think you are anymore, at least not her. but i wonder if you're happy. if you feel loved. if you feel safe in your friendships and relationships — i really hope you do.
i wonder if senior year is creeping up on you, and you're worried about getting a job, or finding research, or applying to grad school. i don't know anything about your life right now. but i know that i miss you. i know that a part of you misses me too, but i don't know if i pushed that part away.
when you reached out to me this summer i felt ecstatic that you were thinking of me, that you still cared about me. but i pushed you away because i was scared of falling back in love with you. i feared the thousand miles between us. what i feared more than anything was to rekindle our trust and intimacy and dependency with the rocky mountains between us. i was afraid of love, of falling and being in it, because i was afraid of getting hurt. why should i care? why am i so protective of my heart? i say because it's been shattered to so many pieces before; i've been betrayed and abandoned and gaslit so deep to my core that love rhymes more with pain than connection in my mind. i miss your warm presence and your cold fingers on my chest. i miss the way you made me feel like a man around others and a boy when it was just the two of us.
i miss how safe i felt, holding you in my arms. i miss feeling like i could surrender in your presence, how physically and emotionally attuned we were to each other.
i hate that i'm writing this. it's embarrassing. i feel scared to admit this to anyone i know, that i'm still thinking about my ex of 7 months, 1.5 yeras later. but the pain is there, and it's real. and i i won't lie to myself, even if the whole world may never know. but what makes me so convinced it's _____ i miss? what if she just fulfilled some of my unmet needs and there's more fish in the sea that are more suited to me?
there's a part of me that feels undeserving of love, and that that relationship was the "best" i can get. but there's another part of me that deeply misses what we had, knows that my avoidance was the blocker, and wants to revive it — that doesn't want to grieve.
-k