6

I think the weirdest part about us is that we never really shut the door.
I know I’m the one who ended things. I know I made that choice, and I had my reasons. I think at the time I thought creating distance would eventually make everything else fade with it. We’d stop talking every day, enough time would pass, life would move on, and whatever this was between us would just become something that happened once.
Except it didn’t really happen that way.
It’s been so long since I’ve even seen you, and somehow you’re still here. We still find stupid little reasons to pop back into each other’s lives. A reel, a message, a joke, whatever. Nothing serious enough that either of us has to acknowledge what we’re actually doing.
And maybe I’m completely wrong, but sometimes it feels like we both know.
We care about each other. A lot. We’re just really fucking good at not saying it.
I think that’s what gets me. There was never a moment where I stopped caring about you. I just stopped allowing myself to have you the way I did before.
And those are two very different things.
I don’t regret making the decision I needed to make then. But I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt, or that some part of me didn’t hope you’d still be there somehow.
And you are.
Not the way you used to be. Not in a way either of us has to explain. Just enough that neither one of us ever completely disappears.
I don’t know what that means. I don’t know if it needs to mean anything.
I just know that I still love you.
I’ve tried calling it other things because saying that feels way too fucking vulnerable. I’ve told myself I just care about you, I’ll always have a soft spot for you, I miss our friendship, I miss how things used to be.
All of those things are true.
But they’re not the whole truth.
The whole truth is that I walked away from you without ever really letting you go.
And maybe we never closed the door because neither one of us actually wanted to.
I don’t know.
Maybe that’s something we’ll just keep not talking about.
But I wanted you to know that I never stopped caring. Not even close.
And unfortunately for both of us, I still fucking love you.