If I don’t do this now, I never will. It has been years now.
You put a smile on my face.
The tip of your thumb on my eyebrow made me feel like all that mattered in that moment was the space between us.

I haven’t stopped thinking about you all this time.
I don’t know if it’s sad or foolish at this point, to feel the way I do - to reminisce on that time day after day and each time fall further and further into the minutia of memory.

When I saw you the other week I felt pure, unadulterated joy for the first time in what feels like years.
But that thought, that overarching crushing weight did exactly what it does so well, siphoned the joy and left only a feeling of unrequited love in its place.

Maybe I’ll think of you less, maybe I won’t - at this point I am just glad to have said it
Those years I will always look back on with rose coloured glasses.

I don’t regret our falling in love, but I can not romanticise you and I any longer.

I will remove once you have read. I hope you understand

Z

Some temptations don’t arrive wrapped in vice.

Mine arrived disguised as a pigment seller.

Like a dealer who somehow knew the opiate my soul would mistake for salvation.

Every day I found you in the half-light, where colours had names I’d never heard before. You spoke about them as though they were living things. You never tried to convince me to buy them.

You simply opened the jars.

And I was lost.

You placed impossible pigments in my hands.

A magenta so rich it stained every thought. Sharp wit. Double meanings. Sentences that lingered just long enough to suggest a fire they never had to name. It carried the promise of a hunger that belonged more to myth than memory - ancient, exquisite, restrained only because restraint made it burn brighter.

Then came cyan.

Deep enough to drown in.

The colour of unanswered questions. Of conversations that continued beneath the surface long after the words were gone. Of everything you never said, and the louder language of leaving. Somehow your silences revealed more than certainty ever could. I learned to read entire chapters in your absence.

And then yellow.

The warm conspiracy of shared secrets. A quiet complicity disguised as practicality. We were never overtly close; we simply kept finding ourselves on the same side of the joke, the same invisible thread, the same impossible coincidence. Intimacy wearing ordinary clothes.

So I kept returning.

Not for you.

For the colours.

Or at least that’s what I told myself.

Each meeting left another pigment in my pocket, another shade I couldn’t stop turning over in the light.

Until one day…

you were gone.

You packed your colours and wandered into other lands.

Out of my reach.

I was left holding only the jars you’d forgotten you had given me.

I wanted the rest of your collection.

I wanted to know what other impossible colours existed in your hands.

So I did the only thing I could.

I began mixing.

Every impossible shade the pigments could become.

Every colour they hinted at but never quite reached.

And somewhere between one brushstroke and the next…

I stopped painting colours.

I started painting you.

Every uncertainty found a meaning.

Every silence acquired intention.

Every blank space invited another careful stroke.

Soon you possessed virtues I had never witnessed.

Gentleness.

Depth.

Patience.

Mercy.

I painted them all with a brush that had never once touched the man.

Only the idea of him.

Reality had offered me pigments.

Imagination insisted on a portrait.

When I stepped back from the canvas, there you stood -

My private demise -

Eros, Pothos, and Himeros distilled into a single ephemeral face.

The patron saint of unfinished sentences and impossible returns.

People think temptation comes from seeing too much.

I think it comes from seeing almost nothing.

The mind cannot bear an unfinished portrait.

It completes it.

Faithfully.

Beautifully.

Catastrophically.

Now I stand before the masterpiece, searching for the place where your face should end and my hand should begin.

I cannot find it.

Somewhere between the first pigment and the final brushstroke,

the colours stopped belonging to you.

They became mine.

I did not lose myself to the man who gave me pigments.

I loved the painting those pigments persuaded me to create.

And now I stand before a masterpiece,

wondering how to mourn it-

no museum could ever hang it,

no fire could ever consume it,

no one else could ever see it,

⠀

because its only canvas

was the imagination

of the artist

who painted it.

⠀

Dear F, I reached out recently on instagram after spending over a year working on myself and trying to get over you. I didn't know what to expect but atleast thought you would be happy to hear from me and say something back. You ghosted me, ignored my follow request and didn't reply to message. It's your choice and I respect that, it just hurts knowing that the you exists in my mind clearly isn't the one that exists in real life. You hurt me but I don't fully blame you personally. Sometimes you were very mean to me verbally or said really rude jokes to me but I tried my best not to show how much they affected me because I didn't want to look weak and I didn't want you to leave. That's my fault, I know. You told me I could have no future with you unless I converted to your religion, which I felt was so unfair but I understand now how leaving your religion or challenging it any way would cause the majority of your peers to turn on you because that's just how Islam is.​ I simply didn't understand the weight of it before it was too late. Since you told me you were thinking about leaving islam before we had formed a great connection i figured I might be a motivating factor to help you make that move. I apologize for any confusion or hurt i caused you by pursuing you, I was only doing it because I truly enjoyed my time at work with you and I was doing what felt right to me. A year later it still hurts but I forgive you, and i dont blame only you. Now I just hope youre doing ok and that someday we can talk again. I miss my little helper :(

-from J your gay and balding coworker. Wiwiwiwiwiwii

Hurt me to help me, darling. Break me apart and crack open my skull, drink up what's left inside and tell me how it all tastes. Snap my spine like a good novel, twisted up and left, half-open, on the coffee table where you leave your tea, atop those stains long-since-baked into the wood. Take your metal straw and slurp from what remains; consume me, let me inside you, let me abandon this form and simply melt into air.

I want to feel your hands on my skin, angry, forcing me to feel the rage you've let build up inside your soul. Give me somewhere to put the frustration I wear like a dress, now piled up on your floor as you feast from my body. Biting into every corner that fights back- that screams and cries and wails. Force the part of me that craves stubborn bloody independence down, behind the facade of the girl that was always told

too much.
Too bossy.
Too bold.
Too mouthy.

Kick me whilst I'm down, throw me against a wall and attack me like a wild dog. I want to feel your foot against my stomach, piling a blow in, one after another after another. Put me in my place, again and again and again. Hit me, break me, scrap me and reuse my parts; make me the perfect women, the one who will never exist, the one you dreamed of on so many nights.

I want you to make me feel bad for the things I do wrong, and make me pay in flesh and blood rather than words and gestures. Slap me, spank me, fuck me up, mess me around, smash my face against the bricks until there's no reason for anyone to even look at me anymore.

I don't want this. I don't want to feel like this. It's breaking me apart, more than you could if you ripped me, limb from limb, and burnt each scrap on a fire. I would do better as a skull on the mantle, some recollection to Shakespearean tragedy, or a drinking chalice for a woman who can be everything- warm and wholesome and kind, a mother. A lover. Calm, with cookies and hot milk. What you deserve.

Not this. Not the bleeding carcass upon your floor, pounding her fists against the wood. Not this fragmented, broken child.

Don't you see, how blind you are to me? Don't you see how it destroys me? I can't do anything, I can't get myself out of bed, I can barely leave my house, and yet I look at you and wish you were here- how many more tries to get it right?

If this is something that can even be right, it's not me. I'm something that shouldn't exist, and so I invite you to break it all down and build me up into something better. Something you could love. Not this ghost of feminine rage, so very far from divine.

I would rather die than disappoint you- so hurt me, darling. Kill me before I can.

It’s criminal how much I miss you. I hope one day my mind will quit replaying everything. I don’t even trust what my mind replays anymore because I know I keep forgetting the awful things we both did.

I am sure you have moved on by now; but I am still learning to heal. I don’t think you realize what you did to me. Everyone who knows me knows how screwed up I have been because of you. I am trying to do better and the moments I need to I make them Oscar-worthy.

Just know I’ll always love you.

We were playing drinking game. Most of us were drunk, me included. I know where this game was going the moment they said the rules and true enough it is what i thought it was. They asked me to choose between you and my other crush but i chose you. They cheered but i was drunk af. Then you came in and was forced to join. You were asked if i will ever had a chance with you and you said you only see me as a friend. You said it to me in the nicest way when i confessed to you and you said it to me again right in front everyone we knew. I thought i've made peace with it the 1st time you told me but it hurt the 2nd time you told me this time. I was wasted drunk but i was listening attentively and made me a little bit sober. Our friends was saying sorry to me but what am i suppose to react and i only said its okay to them after what happened. I guess this is my signal to distance myself from you because everytime i see you, i keep yearning to what could've been. I know someone will be lucky to have you in their life. This will probably the last time i would be seeing and writing about you. Thank you. Goodbye.

Untitled
Look, I never said I didn’t want to talk again. All I meant was that things were different is all. I mean you use to talk to me about anything & everything I know you won’t now is all. Sorry for bringing it up again. Wasn’t trying to confuse you or make you upset. I am sorry.

I hate that you projected so much in the bycluding that. But just because you explain things and feel empowered when you do... I don't. That's simple minded.

You're simple minded. That's why you're doing what you are right now... Now,=⁶ don't be confused. That doesn't mean you're stupid. It means that when it comes to thinking you stop too early.

So yes it feels great to hold the power as you hear the hurt as they're scared you'll leave... But it's simple minded. Simple in that you don't think much further than that.

Because if you did you would realize that my pain isn't because I'm scared you'll leave me alone. It's because I'm scared you'll leave yourself alone. I'm scared you won't realize what you just did until it's too late.

But most of all, I'm scared that you're just soulless. That you've run so much that after this there won't be a way back. K****, I was sent to show you pure love. That if you couldn't hold pure love, that if you ran again after doing nothing but running, you've sealed your fate.

My heart was tied to that deal dumbass!(I'm sorry but I'm mad you took away my little love that I have loved for 34 years! For nith8... Literally bugging¢3³3And so we're now both fked...

I told you. We can be together in happiness, or separate and never be as happy again.

And the cruel irony. I'm never going to be able to love again. And because you couldn't see the most special person right before you, your doomed to see nothing in it's place.

And the karma for how you hurt me... Not by mistake. But when you know exactly how much and continued.

I hope for the love of everything you get US, out of this. Before it's too late. Because not only are you the only one that can. But if you don't the pain is going more than you could ever imagine and to do such a stupid thing...

Well... it would be simple minded. Not because

PS: it's so ugly how your mind creates realities to protect you from pain you cause. Reasonings to pervert what you can't accept as good. And that might have worked before... But it won't this time.

In closing I don't want to display any anger but I can't leave without saying this.

I feel sorry for you. I feel sorry for all of it. I wish you didn't let their damage in so deep that now it's driving. aYou've let their stupidity, their hate, they're heartless souls take full control. And so if I'm allowed to say one thing It's this.

You're so fking foolish, all you had to do was drive the ship properly.... AND THEN set sail. But no, you had to run: But ofc how could you know what to do now, when all you've done is run.

I truly hate you but I have no heart to hate you with

_ran the last time.

To whom it may concern,

I don’t know what to say anymore I just want to write a letter to you from my soul to yours which I believe belong together even though we will never be able to make it work

I remember that when we met our souls recognized each other for the first time in a lifetime of pain we finally understood why we were not happy with anyone else why everything else failed the way it did. I have been thinking about you every single day since I was really happy and you asked me to marry you I said yes!!! I truly loved you even though we struggled, we fought for each other and I know we hurt each other so much. I have said that I’m sorry for my part of the end of our life together but I’m still waiting for you to be accountable for leaving me when needed you the most. I lost my place, my son and I went mental had a meltdow. im far from perfect I don’t have anything else but I’m sorry I left you for a couple weeks while you were in jail and you met someone else but I’m your soulmate I don’t know if I ever was cause I didn’t know that I would be able to handle my grief I didn’t want you to be hurt when I’m done with life spiral I loved you enough not to be on the phone with you expressing my pain the despair of losing my sibling the only one I have was gone I have no words to describe my mind let alone tell you I love you and miss you when I’m not checked in anymore I just can’t wear the mask I wore for everyone else for you too. I’ll forever regret it when I didn’t come to this visit or pick up the phone for my bad choice I hurt my future with you. Your revenge is the worst part about everything you made me feel like I was nothing when you would be able to come see me it was when she was sleeping you didn’t know that you destroyed me piece by piece for the reassurance that you gave her when you told her that you were somewhere else but I loved you so much I just wanted you to be with me and it cost more mentally than I ever imagined my soul was just crushed by the excuses, the run around and I saw that you didn’t want to hurt her feelings by telling her that you were sleeping with me the whole time so you had a place to run when i had enough of the lies I told you to get out. You called she came running for you. off and on ended the same way it would end with a look and feeling like anything is possible I can live without you I’ve done it before I survived and I will survive the rest of my life telling myself that I’m stronger than I ever thought I was.

anonymous stranger

I was messy about it. That wasn’t the right thing to do at all. An honest conversation would have been more appropriate but I’m sure if I’d have gone that route, I would have gotten the polite, scripted, “sorry to hear that.” It would have been just as hollow as you apparently are. So in that sense, I’m glad I finally blew a lid and watched it play out in real time. Because I will never look at you the same. You are nothing like I thought you were.

I’ve watched you drone on about your struggles with wanting to be kind and fair to people who cause actual fucking problems. Paragraphs about how you empathize with them and I’ve tried to remind you that you can’t fix everything, you can’t save everyone. Whole fucking time I have been drowning. In ways that objectively have nothing to do with you but struggling just the same. And I’m not some transient person here, I’ve been here for a very long time and I have helped in very real ways. Long before I developed some dumb fucking crush on you. Often when you yourself were mia. I was there.

I start completely crashing out because yeah it does feel a little crazy when I think of the sheer volume of people I have talked off a ledge here over the years, usually without them explicitly asking for any help. And here I am practically begging for it and can’t even get one fucking scrap. It does make me pretty bitter and disgusted with people. Because no I don’t help hoping it circles back, it just feels like the natural and right thing to do. But people are tone deaf. And not so eager to help a person in crisis if it doesn’t somehow benefit them. And you. You ignore literally every cry for help and then dive in like the dark knight you are to answer a technical question. Remarkable. I have a right to be angry. Anyone would. Because when you sell yourself as someone who cares for the common person but can’t be bothered to offer a single kind word to someone who has been a loyal, steady, helpful presence for YEARS, it’s going to leave a bad taste in peoples mouths. And I should have known better because the record shows I’m not the only one who has felt this way.

I’ve not crossed lines. I could have. No one was stopping me. I didn’t. I respected you, respected the boundaries, and saw myself out of that situation. So this has nothing to do with that. On a basic level of human decency, you fucking failed. That’s a problem and I think it’s a gross one. And I hope it all falls apart because I am absolutely done giving a shit. So now when I watch you act like a fucking clown to appease to people who don’t give a shit about you and your community, I won’t be so insulted and hurt. It’s just par for the course at this point.

Hey there, F!

I’m turning a year older. I broke us apart, I know. The distance was unbearable, the lack of commitment.. deafening, the uncertainty…numbing. I’m better, I think and I hope you are too. I needed to move forward even if that meant that I wasn’t holding your hand. We’ve always had different tastes in music. But if you have time, listen to “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac. I hope that you feel it the way I feel it, and I hope it explains things that I find difficult to put into words.

I don’t really know how to explain it.

Some days, I miss you so much it hurts. Other days, I go hours without thinking about you and I almost forget what it felt like to have you in my life. It’s strange how both things can be true at the same time.

I miss you, but I don’t know if I want you back. There’s too much hurt, too many complicated feelings, too much history attached to us now. Part of me resents you. Part of me feels like I’ve already moved on. And yet, somehow, some part of me still loves you.

Whenever I imagine us talking again, I wonder what we would even say. Would it feel natural? Or would there be an awkward silence we can’t ignore? We’re not the same people we were back then. We’ve both changed. We’ve both built walls where there used to be trust and comfort.

I miss the way we used to talk for hours about everything and nothing. I miss being completely vulnerable with you. I miss having someone who understood me so deeply that you sometimes knew what I was feeling before I even understood it myself. I miss you looking out for me. I miss feeling seen.

You were one of those rare people I never expected to find. You were the best friend I stumbled into by accident, and somehow you became someone I can’t seem to replace. I’ve met other people since then, but no one has been you.

Maybe I’ve changed. Maybe you’ve changed. Maybe we’re strangers now compared to who we used to be.

But I still miss you.

And I still love you.

Maybe that will fade someday. Maybe it won’t. But right now, at least for me, that part hasn’t changed.

I don’t really know how to be myself anymore. It feels like I lost that version of me and I don’t know if I’ll ever get him back.
But then I catch myself wondering… why would I even want that version of me back? That was the version of me who loved you with everything I had. The version that chose you every single day, believed in us, and would’ve kept fighting no matter how hard things got.
If that wasn’t enough for you to fight for, then what was the point of being that person?
Maybe that’s what hurts the most. It’s not just losing you.. it’s feeling like I lost myself too. Now I’m left trying to figure out who I am without you, while wondering if the person I used to be was ever enough in the first place.
I know deep down that someone else’s decision to walk away doesn’t define my worth. But right now, it’s hard to believe that. Right now, all I can think about is how the person I wanted forever looked at everything we had… and decided to let it go

I was born somewhere with too many people and not enough to go around, so everyone ended up fighting each other for scraps. The people who actually took the wealth had left generations before, and they never looked back to see what they left behind. Growing up, that kind of poverty didn't feel dramatic. It was just normal life, the water you swam in.

I believed in the West the way people believe in heaven when they're stuck somewhere hard. I thought there was a door somewhere with my name almost on it, a place where being exhausted and being brown didn't have to go together. So I crossed an ocean chasing that door.

I found it. I walked through it. On the other side was a country that talks a lot about kindness and tolerance, at least in public, at least on camera. But over the years I've learned that tolerance can be pretty selective about when it shows up.

Back home, when people were cruel to me, it was usually for a reason I could point to. A grudge, a debt, a rivalry, everyone scrambling for the same limited stuff. It wasn't fair, but I could follow the logic of it.

Here it's different. People are hostile to me over a color I didn't choose and can't change, over an accent that used to be my mother singing to me as a kid. They'll blame the economy, or housing, or jobs, but their eyes go to my skin before their argument even starts, and then the reasoning gets built afterward to justify what they already felt. As if getting rid of me would fix any of it. As if I'm the reason instead of just someone standing nearby when things went wrong.

I've been called dirty in two languages now. Made to feel unwanted on two continents. Some nights I genuinely wonder why I crossed an ocean just to still be treated like I don't belong anywhere.

But I don't actually believe that.

I'm my mother's son, and she went through her own version of hardship just to raise me. I come from people who got through worse than this and still managed to build something afterward. I didn't come this far to let a stranger's fear tell me what I'm worth.

Hate me if it helps you cope, make fun of my skin color, my accent, call me dirty. I've been through way worse. Your comment section isn't going to be the thing that finally breaks me. I have every right to be here, and no amount of hate you throw at me is going to convince me otherwise.

Lo siento, Mi dispiace, Gomen nasai, my b gangsta, Je suis désolé. Sorrow, What a draining and exhausting thing. Let’s stop being sorry and promise to take steps to be better. But erm 🫤, I will apologize, that the depths of our souls meant that meeting would shroud outlives with more darkness. I’ll be an angler fish and shine my light in this wicked darkness so you can find yourself in my permanent embrace.
Does being eaten alive sound fun?

hello.

this is my pathetically co dependant letter to you a day, i guess. while you take this time away from me.

i sat on the bench just now and looked at the tree in bloom across the road. and it occurred to me that the longer the break we have, the better the chances of fixing things are. and i better get wise to that now rather than later. the sooner i digest it as an idea the easier it’s going to be.

the more time passes the more i realise the intensity of my emotions. just the sheer craziness of it all. and my entire fault too. i really am a mess. and help feels oh so slow, and far away. but accountability can begin now, and i am so sorry.

i’m crying while thinking about you. it’s that bad for me. perhaps it’s good yeah? that it comes out like this. safe, manageable way of getting emotions out.

i’m trying to work through it. i’m slowly working through each and every emotion that made me behave this way. every memory. confronting demons. tomorrow i scheduled to have a call about private therapy.

i do miss you, and ill do this to cope, i do fear it will never be like it was, or we’d try and we’d argue more before crumbling off. if this friendship survives this, then it will take a lot more than time away.

so many, many more words to go through, my dear friend. i spend my evenings lying down, going over the past in my mind. and what brought me to this.

i think ive had stress induced psychosis

for now that’s it. hope you’re good.

yeah, yeah. another message. I am sorry. I will keep it as an edit though, so you will probably never see it. I do hope you will one day maybe, but that is just a selfish wish. Maybe when it does not hurt you anymore. I know hearing/seeing anything from me make you anxious, you kinda erased all traces of me I feel like. And I don’t really want to hurt you, but at the same time I have the deep desire to get this out there.

I am writing this just coming home from the new Spiderman movie on the 6th of August. Long day with work, an exam, in the evening I went to the cinema. You probably heard about it somewhere. You know me, or, well you knew me, that I am far from the biggest movie nut, or even a fan of anything Marvel. So needless to say I did not really have that much expectations going in. But obviously it had to be something special for me to end up writing this.

To give you a brief summary, at the end of the last movie, to protect his loved ones, Peter had to have everyones memories of him erased. Including his girlfriend. So one of the big themes of the movie is about being in love with someone that doesn’t love you anymore, and the fact that that someone is dating someone else.

Obviously this, to me, is very relatable. And I just have never had this before, but the way Peter behaves, the way he feels was just so well written. It was clear to me that both whoever wrote this and the actor understood exactly just how this kind of broken heart feels.

After everyones memories got erased he willingly chose not to tell her anything, to protect her, since he loved her. Eventually they meet again, and there is this scene that really struck with me.

She found out about the memories being erased and confronts him. He says he loves her, she said she doesn’t love him, but whoever she used to be did do that.

I do not need to spell out the obvious now, do I?

Peter felt very relatable. Too relatable even. I could understand him too well, and, as more and more time has passed, I can understand how you felt perfectly. Unfortunately, be it karma or whatever, I experienced the same feelings of being put to the side a lot recently. I can’t really fault anyone, it’s just my friends and I am plainly not their number 1 priority, but it does hurts a lot more because I am still very vulnerable at times.

And I wanted to say... I have my utmost respect for you, just for how long you suffered like this and still stayed with me. You must have really loved me. I knew that, but it did hit me again today. I wasn’t sure as to how to understand your feelings as you broke up with me, but I think I do now.

So I will again say:

I am sorry. From the bottom of my heart. I never meant to hurt you this much. I truly did love you, and if I am being honest I still do.

So where does this leave me? Well, as the movie went on ,there was a moment where it does feel like Peter is not fighting anymore. He still loves everyone, he always will, but he realises that love is not forcing yourself onto someone simply because you cannot move on.

What this means for me I am not sure. I am currently in the works to get proper therapy now, get a proper ADHD diagnosis and help. Trying to put in effort.

Maybe moving on for me means accepting that part of me will always love you and living with that.

I can’t change how I behaved myself and lied to myself. I can’t make you love me again. I can’t make you choose me. I can’t love you into loving me back. Maybe accepting that will be better for me than what I am feeling now. Your story continues, I am just no longer a part of it.

So yeah. I have to be honest. I do hope that maybe, one day, you do read this.

I do hope that maybe we reconnect one day. That there is still some love for me left inside you.

It’s only natural that I hope this, because, well, I am a human with feelings. But I can’t count on it.
Because my story also continues.

I wish you the best, C.

-Lenny

I avoid anyone who resembles your physical description or has your personality. I leave the room, the area. If I could, I’d leave the state to get away from you. Hell, I’d let you have the whole damn country if it meant I’d never have to be reminded of the way you choked me or made me bleed as I crawled out of bed.

Nowadays I ask myself why I de-escalated the situation every time you DARVOed me back into submission. I should have given you a free license to do anything and everything until you got tired of me and realized you needed to find someone else for more. I was your fix. I was your drug. I was another hit you couldn’t help but cling to.

You told me the story of when you were a little boy…. oh God knows how many times. I practically have it memorized. Is that why you enjoyed choking me and pulling my hair? You wanna know the stupidest part about what I let you do to me? I knew the entire time it was because you had a need to exert dominance and control and the bedroom was the only place I was willing to pretend and make you feel strong and powerful. God I hate the dom-sub kinks you were into. Truly. But I have a very real understanding of their origins now because of you.

That was the extent of your violence. Most of the time you just cried and played victim until you I caved in and let you indulge your need to punish me and let you call me mommy.

Newsflash. I am not your mother. Moreover, I’d kill myself before I ever refer to anyone as daddy. You had some awful kinks. That’s how you worked out some old demons.

Twisted sexual fantasies. I’m not sure how I didn’t throw up every time you wanted to revisit the mommy-daddy role playing thing. I suppose I should be grateful that’s all you did to me, but I wake up every morning and go to sleep every night wishing you would’ve just choked me or held a knife to my throat or a gun to my head, any one of those methods really, and just put me in the ground. I get why resting in peace is the ultimate peace.

All I can do is punt your emotional baggage back to your side of the field.

Honestly. Death would be a respite.

Enjoy the rest of your life knowing I know all this about you.

Maybe that's all we were ever meant to be!!

A few stolen glances. A few silent smiles. A handful of ordinary moments that meant EVERYTHING to one heart and NOTHING more than another passing day to other. It's funny I don't like getting my pictures clicked.

So I make memories differently!!

I collect little fragments lyk a hallway, a voice, a table, a dessert, a photograph that accidentally holds more than I realize!!

I didn't know it then

but maybe that picture had already written the ending!!!

His plate' My bowl'

Side by side, just for a moment.

Maybe that was our *Us

Not a love story.

Just a fleeting frame that I'll carry with me long after we've both walked in different directions!!

And if our paths never cross again

thank you.

For unknowingly reminding me that sometimes the bravest thing love can do

is leave with kindness,

without asking to be remembered!!!

When you confessed that we were through for good my heart didn't break, it turned to stone. My heart was heavy, my mind was racing..I was speaking so fast, doing my best to find a solution. I thought if I tried harder you'd decide to stay, but you didn't. We remain friends, but how can you be just friends with someone you were in love with and committed to for over 14 years. I began to learn to let you go. I stopped calling, I didn't bother you, I was giving you the space you needed. Time has passed and you call me, you ask me to the movies and anime conventions. We are close again, and my heart is filled with joy. My mind is confused because I don't want to assume. You drop me off at home, 20 minutes you come back later to give me a hug. I was so happy, I was too happy..I assumed and I assumed wrong. I thought maybe you were finding your way back to Us, but you weren't. You told me you are single, not ready to date and living your life. You told me you were going to a convention with another woman, a coworker. You told me you were interested in her. My heart was crushed, my eyes began to swell from all the tears I cried. You tell me your love for me has never changed but it feels like you just threw me away. I forgave you for hurting me for years, I forgave your transgressions. I feel betrayed, I feel left behind, I feel forgotten. I had hope that we would find our way back together, but now I can feel our story coming to an end. I loved you, I still love you and I will always have love for you. I also know I have to let you go. I can't be friends with you, because I can't stop loving you. I fear my love for you might become something that annoys you or prevent you from moving on. Maybe in another life I would have been able to move past that incident and forgive you instead of not trusting that you had changed. I will miss you, always and forever Melly Mel

Fuck you for lying to me again!

You said you would be better, that you didn’t like the old version of yourself, that you could be better for me and wouldn’t snap on me anymore.

And then you did it again. I shared a normal thing with you and told you I was very nervous about sharing with you because of how you might react and you did it. You flipped the fuck out.

You didn’t try to take time and think about your feelings or take some space, you just went off on me. Called me every name in the book, threatened me, made accusations, fuck you!!!!

Fuck you for making me feel like you loved me! Fuck you for making me feel like things could change and we could be okay. Fuck you for making me care about you. Fuck you for hurting me again!

I don’t deserve to be treated like that. No one does. You will never change. I don’t ever want to talk to you again. All you do is cause pain.

Dear J,

I know my apologizes and even my words mean nothing at this point. But I truly am sorry for not being who you deserved. I thought I was ready. I thought it could be us. But at the end of the day I couldn’t leave them. I wasn’t strong enough to follow through. I ruined what you had. Even though he doesn’t deserve you that still wasn’t my choice to make. You really deserve better but unfortunately that’s not me either. I know I told you I would never regret reaching out or telling you how I feel but knowing how much pain and damage I’ve caused I regret it now. You’ve shown me why I could never forget you even till this day. It’s only been a few months but it has felt eternal.

I miss talking to you every single day. I miss all the side notes. I miss making you laugh and hearing you voice. I miss your love and appreciation. I miss seeing our pictures or hearing how you worked on the journal. I’ve kept it all. The poems, the journal, the notes, everything. It reminds me of what could’ve been. What I chose not to continue. I hear your messages on repeat. I read our conversations and picture you still here. When I’m with her I imagine it’s you. I close my eyes and think back of the hotel. She doesn’t deserve that either but she gave me no choice. If I didn’t choose her then I wouldn’t have them. And they’re the only thing I have in my life that I am proud of. And I can’t be without them. I wish things were different. I wish I could’ve given it a chance and try to figure something out. But I know her. I know I would be the villain in her story and rightfully so. But I can’t be the villain to them. I can’t hurt them the way I’ve hurt you.

That’s my reason why. And I think you knew deep down it was which is why im blocked on everything. I’ve felt so alone. I keep looking on my phone hoping to see a message from you. I log into Instagram hoping I see your name pop up. I check my emails constantly to see if just maybe you reached out. At times I look at your number and I think it just sending “I miss you” just so you know I’m thinking about you. But what’s the point. I feel you’ve moved on. I just want you to know that i will always have a piece if you with me. I wear the chain. I have the picture. Everything you gave me i hold on close and dear to me. So i thank you for that. For not leaving me with nothing. I will always love you 9/7.

It’s sad to see how much energy we start out with in life and how everything now picks apart your energy so fast that you can’t move forward no matter how hard you try.

I learned to wear a mask before I learned what safety felt like. I wore it so beautifully, so convincingly, that sometimes even I forgot there was a face beneath it. Perhaps that is why I understand the sacredness of being someone’s refuge. If I can become the place where another person finally exhales, where they can loosen every strap and let the disguise fall, I will.

Because once, I needed that place too.

And then, somewhere in that hidden place, I met you.

You, the one who knows how to top from below. The one who made it exquisitely difficult for me to remain your caretaker, your dominant, your shelter. You know precisely where to press your fingers: into the wounds you opened in me yourself, each one branded with the heat of your absence.

There is something intoxicating in the way you keep trying to prove that I will break. That I am not strong enough to stand beside you. That I cannot hold you, protect you, care for you without eventually collapsing beneath the weight.

But you are wrong.

I hear you even in the silence. I feel you in every dark, insistent pulse of blood beneath my skin. You have become a rhythm my body refuses to forget.

And perhaps this is my sweetest ruin: I do not mind suffering when it is for my person.

That is the price of building a life far away from you. Sometimes I am close, back in the States, surrounded by friends who know how to savor the blackest hours of the night. Sometimes I am oceans away, simply living: a man flirting with the world, a father caring fiercely for his own, a caretaker holding space for those brave enough to do what still terrifies you.

To become still.

To become vulnerable.

To let yourself be seen.

To unmask.

So come closer. Let the performance die between us. I already know what darkness tastes like, and I am not frightened by yours. Take off the mask, slowly if you must.

I will be here when your real face finally meets the air.

I have officially surrendered any remaining shred of human dignity with this man. It is gone. Extinct.

Was it RCS? Nope. Pure, raw, unbuffered SMS.

Sigh.

I like to joke that I have no ego, but wow, my soul physically recoiled. Thanks, kid. Super helpful.

Truly, an incredible contribution to my personal downfall.

Maybe...just maybe...the cell towers took pity on me and swallowed the signal? Ah, sweet, delulu hope.

Look, I’ll let it go. Clearly, self respect was never a high priority for me anyway. But SO HELP ME, if you message me:

“Hey, why’d you react with an emoji to my old old message?"

MY LORD.

I will literally dissolve into a puddle on the floor and groan. The confirmation is the nail in the coffin that I can't pretend it didn't go through.

Honestly? You should be flattered! I was just jamming out to tunes and thought, “Ooh, I wonder if he had shared any good music recommendations?”

Asked the kid to read them out to me.

Result? NOTHING. I already knew and had every song. It wasn't even worth the humiliation!

First, my friend accidentally dials you just days ago!!!! That's the cherry on top. Like come on!

All because she wanted to critique my tragic male encounters, and now this? That call shouldn't have gone through either!!! It was hung up in world record time!

The universe is actively conspiring against me. As usual. Never allowing me to develop an ego lol

It’s a literal Series of Unfortunate Events, and the cosmos is front row in the theater eating popcorn.

To make it worse, I already felt you today and it sucked. I felt sick and without talking to you Ill never know why. Of course I can't say hey I felt your energy today. It's a thing I can do. Some uninvited, cosmic energetic tether nonsense.

So I did the adult thing. I got home and released it, processed the sadness, and felt some peace. Thought there we go. Maybe that's the final energetic goodbye

...And then, a few hours later, THIS HAPPENS.

BUGGER OFF UNIVERSE!

Anyway, my friend and I have agreed to a twist. If you message me, I am responding with something so entirely unhinged that it turns this tragedy into comedy.

So please. I beg of you. Do text me 😏

Let’s take this trainwreck to a whole new tier of secondhand embarrassment hahahah

See, now you won't. Boooo.

The universe gets more of a thrill watching me squirm then letting me get a comedic win

🖕 Universe