There is no beauty quite like that of the “almost almosts.”
You think you’ve found the person, the one movies quietly promise will walk into your life someday. Except this time, it’s not just a dream. You get to live it. With butterflies in your stomach, everything feels fuller than it ever has before. Life suddenly has a strange kind of purpose, like something you didn’t know was missing has finally found you.
You think of them constantly. Not in a dramatic way, just… naturally. Effortlessly. As if they’ve always belonged in your thoughts.
Deep down, you know you’re in love. Maybe you’ve known since the moment you saw them. But you don’t say it. Not yet. What if it’s too soon? What if saying it out loud somehow breaks it?
So you let yourself feel it quietly.
Life starts to look different. Colors seem brighter. People notice something about you like a glow you didn’t realize you carried. You hope it lasts forever, but you don’t let yourself think about forever too much. You don’t want to jinx it.
But who are you kidding?
You’ve already imagined a whole life with them.
And then, somehow, it ends.
No warning ever feels like enough warning. One day it’s there, filling every part of you and the next, it’s something you carry instead. The kind that sits heavy in your chest, twisting into knots every time they cross your mind.
And they do. Constantly.
Isn’t that how it always goes?
A beginning full of chemistry, a middle that moves too fast, and an ending that breaks something you didn’t know could break.
Until the next one.
Some people circle back. They find their way to the same person again and again , beginning, middle, ending, over and over, until one day they just… stay. Not because it stopped being complicated, but because they chose each other anyway.
There’s something almost comforting about that.
Stability within instability.
A kind of love that survives its own chaos.
And then there are the “almost almosts.”
The ones that never quite make it back.
The ones that remain suspended somewhere between what was and what could have been.
I had one of those.
I remember the day he texted me, saying he was coming to Bangalore and asking, casually if I’d be free to meet. We hadn’t really talked much before that. Just fragments of shared memories from a summer school at IIT Bombay. After that, we drifted. A few reels here and there, nothing meaningful.
And yet, somehow, it never felt like nothing.
I just knew I had to meet him. And when I did, it felt strangely easy like I had known him all along.
A few months later, we started talking properly. It didn’t take long before it felt inevitable, like we had found each other at exactly the right time. Not in a “forever” way, maybe but in a way that still felt certain. Like we were meant to happen, even if we weren’t meant to last.
We tried to hold onto it across 1500 kilometres. We did it well, until we couldn’t.
Then he came to Bangalore.
We decided it would be four days of pretend and then a lifetime of “no contact”.
But oh god, those four days felt unreal. Like we had stepped out of everything complicated and into something simple. For a while, it didn’t feel like an “almost” anymore; it didn’t feel like it was just a “pretend”. It felt like something that could stay.
But time moves faster when you want it to slow down.
And suddenly, it was time to say goodbye.
“Hey… I don’t think I’m ready to say goodbye. Please just leave. Don’t look back.”
So I didn’t.
I walked away, crying, back to my hostel. I didn’t turn around. I didn’t say anything. I just left.
Ping.
A message from him.
“Seriously?”
…
An hour later.
Another message.
“I’m still at the bus stop. There’s still a few minutes before I leave-”
No. I can’t.
I’m so sorry.
I loved you.
“I hate you. I hate you so much.”