To you
I wanted to write a goodbye letter for a while now, but we are millennials, and nobody writes letters anymore. If I sent a text, it would say delivered but I would never be sure if you read it. I used to tell my friends that I loved you. But maybe I imagined you. Maybe I imagined us dancing in the kitchen to some nineties loves song; laughing uncontrollably to some tired joke that had been laughed at before. Or maybe I imagined wearing your oversized shirt and swiping through endless pictures of our lives on my iPhone. But that is what they were. Figments of imagination. You were a blurb. A text of hey. A text of what’s up. An afternoon or a night of togetherness. Then weeks of looking at the phone. Hoping. Hoping. Hoping. Nothing. Seems foolish that the seasons would change but waiting by the phone stayed the same. Words like pathetic and embarrassing would flood my brain. Nights of dark playlists and tear-stained pillows. For a second, I thought I was dreaming. Maybe we never met. Maybe we never laughed. Maybe I never told you I disliked eggs. Maybe you never said life made you sad.
Ghosted.
That is what the kids call it nowadays. But it happens when you are in your thirties too. When you have a decent career. When you have semi solid friendships. It happens in your thirties.
I wrote this to originally tell you to forget I existed. To forget how my perfume smells. To forget how my hair looks in the morning. To forget me and you. But you have forgotten all those things already. You would have hoped that I forgot me and you already. I admit, for a while I kept looking at the phone again. For a while, I hoped you would call. For a while, I hoped you would come back. Now I know there is no coming back. This is not really a goodbye note since goodbye already happened without my consent. I liked you. I thought you were attractive. I thought you were cool. But I never needed you. I chose my own company over someone who could barely utter the words goodbye. I would never ghost myself.
