Words I'll Never Say to You

I used to torture myself with so many painful narratives around the story of us.

Like, had I been more emotionally developed, it could have worked. Or, maybe if I had considered things more from your point of view, I could have understood how to better communicate with you, and you’d still be here.

But the truth is, I’m happy you aren’t here. I would be a fraction of the person I am today had you stayed. And you never really did anything to warrant this kind of love in the first place. It makes me feel a little sad for you, if I’m being honest.

You denied the connection, I denied that things weren’t right.

I made things personal that didn’t need to be.

I perceived your silence as confirmation rather than a blow off. I can’t explain why I did that, other than I was high and following my intuition. One doctor explained to me that the high dosages of prescription medication over extended periods of time altered my brain chemistry and caused the manic episode. For whatever reason, I still have trouble accepting what happened as having been a manic episode.

It felt so much more significant; so much more deeply spiritual. It felt so right.

It made me feel happier than I had ever felt in my entire life. I was living in my ideal reality, at for a few short weeks.

Everything that happened just started to feel romantic. I had an entirely new perspective on the conflicts that arose in my life; they all suddenly seemed manufactured, irrelevant. I realized how inconsequential circumstances actually were.

Most of my friends were supportive when I told them I was getting back together with you. All of them assumed it was a matter of time. Others were surprised it took us so long to reach such a logical conclusion. We belonged together, it was just a matter of time until we both realized it; acted upon it.

I can genuinely say I believed we were getting back together and I thought the fantasy was reality until your birthday, when I texted you, and you deflected it by not responding. That felt weird, until that internal voice of yours in my head told me it was because we agreed not to talk in the 3D.

This is so vulnerable to share because that’s one of the first questions doctor’s ask you.

“Are you hearing voices?”

I will never forget the look on my friend’s face when I told her you and I were able to communicate telepathically. I swear she has never been able to look at me the same way since. I was crazy. Or odd. Pathetic? Sad? Delusional?

I have since realized that the only way I can come to an actual conclusion about what happened is to come up with an explanation that intuitively makes sense to me. After all, if my intuition got me into this mess in the first place, don’t you think it will also be what provides reprieve? When isn’t the poison also the antidote, at least in some dosage?

If you ask me what I genuinely think happened, it is this: I became more in love with the life I desired than the one I was currently living. But I did it before I loved myself, so not all of my desires and intentions were soul led; there was still a lot of ego involved.

I kind of think of it as “going mad.”

I had so much unexpressed sadness living in my body. So many things I wanted to say to you but never got the chance to. I took the hatred I felt towards you and inflicted it upon myself. I took the love I should have had towards myself and projected it outwards towards you. It’s all the same, you know; the way I desperately craved you was the love I so desperately needed to give myself. I didn’t know what it even meant to love myself, and I thought the whole idea and concept sounded so abstract and stupid. How was I supposed to love me when the only person who ever had stopped?

Our relationship itself was not what I missed. It was the idea of the possibility of everything we could be. I saw potential in myself when I was by your side, but for some reason, I felt like that diminished the second you stopped loving me. You were the only worthwhile person who had seen potential in me; you saw it in places I had yet to see if for myself. I understand now that we were drunk and young and in love at an impossible point in our lives.

I pinned all my hopes and desires to you in a way that wasn’t fair. Nothing I had was worth anything if it failed to grab your attention. Not just your attention, but more accurately, your approval. I never felt good enough for you and when you started dating someone else this solidified my inadequacy.

You were my favorite person I had ever encountered. I found every detail about you to be hopelessly fascinating. I was entranced by the idea of you. Even my daydreams were enchanted by your presence. You made ever possible situation better, at least in my head. You became a main character, and no one else could come close to measuring up. You were my dream man, but I failed to remember that you were actually just a person.

I used to get so scared before meeting up with you, particularly after our breakup. We would always grab coffee or drinks because we still wanted to see each other; because we loved each other, but the second I would see you sitting there across from me, I would find myself puzzled at how normal it all was. I was never scared of you when you were beside me; that person was never mean. That person was honest, and thoughtful and looked at me with the sincerest, most confused eyes in the world. I understood you when I was with you, but the second we were separated, the doubts set in, as did the insecurities and the brutal inner self talk.

When we went our separate ways after graduation, I knew things would never be the same. I was too scared to ask for a future except when I was drunk, and you packed me away in a box somewhere in Pittsburgh, only to be revisited at nighttime when you couldn’t shield me from being in your dreams. I sometimes wonder the ways my spirit haunted you.

Everything about us was subliminal, seething under the surface. I still don’t even know how to answer how long we dated. Did we even date? Date, I’m not so sure, but loved we did, absolutely.

I never thought I would get over you. I put off the healing process for as long as humanly possible. You were my muse, my reason for bettering myself. Until one day, my desire to feel good finally outweighed my desire to be with you. Holding onto a ghost won’t get you very far in this lifetime…

I felt like if I could prove the manic episode was spiritually significant, it would mean I wasn’t crazy. It all came from a place of proving the things I perceived were real, because if they weren’t I wasn’t sure how I would reconcile them in my mind. What did it mean about me?

My biggest fear was asking someone for help and hearing back “I’m not sure how to help you.” I think this stems from hearing it from my Dad in the middle of a panic attack. I had those daily after leaving the hospital. My body was so disoriented from the bipolar medication that I never needed. I was prescribed the highest dose of an antipsychotic all because I signed my name on the dotted line to become part of a clinical drug trial.

Side note: who the f*k let that guy into the psych ward in the first place?

I was broken, a shallow shell of a human, but the idea of one day being with you was somehow enough to to get me through. I would dream of you, journal about you, fantasize about you, make myself believe you were right around the corner. It had to be true, I had to be right. It was too embarrassing to think I was wrong about this.

I sit here now, years removed from all of this. Sometimes it feels like I’m writing about a sort of mythological creature when I’m writing about you; a work of fiction, a dream fragment. It’s hard to imagine feeling that way about someone now, which I genuinely feel grateful for; I have a more grounded, sustainable perspective of love these days.

On my worst days, I feel weird writing about you. Question my words the same way I questioned my worth.

I still think about you sometimes.

Last night, when I was coming home in an Uber, the driver got a call that the car announced was from My Love ♥️.

I chuckled, because in the past, it would have made me think of you.