dedicated to the people i stuck with 10 years who i will probably never meet again.
prologue to the letter
i broke stuff with you guys. sprained myself countless times. felt jealousy, love and anger(although those go hand in hand), and now we grew apart. and yet if it came down, i would feel comfortable if i ever sat next to you, striking a conversation that would just help to catch up on the second we missed. hello, if you read this. i’ve missed you people. this is a letter to you.
(from pinterest)
hello there. i don't know if you remember me the way i remember you. there's a chance that you don't - that you have hidden away the details of you somewhere beneath as a pretence of moving on, or patience, to open it up at the right moment. but i remember you. not in exact detail, not specific memories but a murky mixture of fragments. i remember laughing when your voice cracked, i remember playing football when nothing else worked and i especially remember the names we called each other. i remember the late evenings and cheap deodorant. i remember some of the messages we sent each other, the nicknames we could only day without flinching.
there was a time when we knew everything about each other, the facts and the spaces in between. how some of you would stutter when you lied, others picking their nails, how you would arrive 10 minutes late only to stay for 2 hours longer much to everybody’s annoyance. gods, did we know each other. in a way people do before they have been hurt, when they haven't learned how to disappear slowly, without drama, jus distance. i know some people are only friends for a season, and i also know nobody likes to talk about seasons changing until and unless we are already in a different one.
when did we stop talking? when was it fine for us to not know about each other's days. do we still have a group chat? i don't remember deleting it, if i ever did. maybe it still exists, maybe we are just ghosts in it allowing the “we'll catch up soon"s to fade away allowing to the world to pull us apart. i don't blame this on us not caring, but rather the feeling that we still had time, because somehow growing up meant growing in the same direction. but growing up meant growing tired, growing bored as i sit here and write this while i can't get any sleep wondering what your laughter sounds like now, wondering who holds your secrets now, wondering if you still talk to that one teacher we hated or if you've finally learned to cry in front of somebody else.
do you know what's keeping me up? it's that we didn't just stop talking, we stopped needing to - and even if we need to, we forgot how. i do miss you. i miss the version of me who existed around you, the one who wasn't afraid to be annoying, or dramatic, or even wrong. did he exist only because of you? yes. he left when you did. that's a part which people ignore, aside from the exes and heartbreaks and lovers, but they hardly speak about a friend that evolved into a stranger, one of the few people who remember your birthday without checking instagram ranting about stuff that didn't even matter but it felt like life and death back then.
and if you’re reading this - if some part of you stumbled into these words and paused long enough to wonder if it’s about you - then it is. even if you don’t feel the same, it is. i carry you still. in jokes i don’t tell anyone else. in songs i don’t skip. in old photos i swear i’ve deleted but keep re-finding in random corners of my life. i wonder what would’ve happened if i reached out sooner. if i replied to that one last message with something more than “lol.” if i said “i miss you” before it got awkward to say. if i told you that being around you made me believe i was worth being around. maybe you didn’t know that. maybe none of us said the things we should’ve said when it was easier to say them. we had the time. we just didn’t use it. and now, every time i look back, all i see is the silence we left behind. maybe that’s what regret really is - the sound of what was never said, echoing in all the places we thought we’d visit again together. and yeah, i know. life happens. people grow. people drift. but i don’t think i ever stopped waiting for the day we’d all sit on some random floor again, talking nonsense like it meant everything. maybe that’s naïve. or maybe it’s the last piece of hope i haven’t given up on yet. if you’re doing well, i’m proud of you. if you’re struggling, i’m still here. even if it’s from a distance. even if we never speak again. you don’t stop loving people just because time does. and if we ever do meet again, i promise to laugh too loud. to hug you too long. to pick up right where we left off - just after the last “i miss you” we never said.