A Letter Never Sent

When I hear the word love, the second person who comes to mind after family is you. I don’t know what love truly is—I can’t find the words to explain it, yet it lingers like a shadow, familiar and confusing all at once.
Why is love so confusing?
I feel both pain and contentment that lasts forever.
Is happiness often shadowed by sorrow?

I tried to convince myself that time would erase you.
Five years? No… nearly six years, and still, you linger in my thoughts, haunting me.

It sounds silly, I know!

But after all these years, it still hurts to realise that you’ve never thought of me the way I think of you…

In fact, your friends said it was not me. It would never be me!!!!
Even after being slammed by those harsh words, I was still hopeful, ignoring the reality.

I’m tired of convincing myself that I can’t be a part of your life in the way I wish I could be.

How can I even complain to you? You don’t even know, you aren’t even aware of my love for you. I can’t even blame you.

I have watched you live, watched you move on, and loved someone else with a smile that could outshine the stars. Somehow, every smile you share with her aches my heart. It feels like a betrayal, even as I tell myself to be happy for you.

You’ll never know the thousand words I have swallowed back or the glances I have hidden behind my nods. I wonder if you ever see me at all, or if I’m just a passing face in your story, an extra in the background.

Tonight, as I think of you laughing with her, sharing moments under the sky, I feel a weight settle over me, thick and unyielding.

Why does love cling so desperately to those who never ask for it?

Why does it stay, unwanted and uninvited, haunting the wrong person?

I’m sick of it! How can I unlove someone?

People say time heals everything, but they don’t tell you that some wounds are so deep that they never fully heal. Maybe I was destined to carry this love like a ghost, something that once was but now won’t be.

I have tried to forget you.

I’ve tried to let you go.

But every time I see you, I remember that there are some loves that remain incomplete, like unfulfilled dreams that get lost in the first rays of the morning.

And here I am, in a dark corner of my own heart, watching you live a story I could never be a part of. You are happy without me, and I am trying to collect the pieces of a love that is incomplete and unanswered.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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