From time to time, I throw something out into the void because I can't talk to you.
I mean, I could, I guess. But it's been eleven years and I think it would be too weird. Like I'm a creep who can't move on.
I've moved on. I don't usually think about you unless you're in my dream from the night before. Last summer I had one where you told me goodbye, and the dreams stopped for a while. But they came back a few months ago, and I'm glad. Because the bottom line is, I miss talking to you, if only in a dream.
I still have our conversations. Not all of them, but the last few, because they got saved in the cloud. I haven't gone back and looked at them in eleven years. Until today.
I posted a letter on here several years ago questioning if you were maybe just a sociopath. If you just led me on all that time for no reason but to enjoy my suffering. I was warned about you, long ago. But reading the messages again, I don't think so.
I went back into those messages to look for red flags. I was hoping to find some reason to dislike you, with many more years of lived experience to judge by. But I didn't find any red flags. It seems to me that you genuinely enjoyed talking to me too. It seemed like I was special to you.
I said I loved you back then, but what I meant was something much more specific that I don't think either of us fully understood. This is what I meant: Talking to you brings me such joy. I don't think I've ever experienced joy like that with anyone else. The feeling that you're talking to someone who gets it on a fundamental level, and who matches your intelligence and your wit. It has very little to do with physical attraction, and in fact it may not be there at all. I loved that connection. I've never found it again.
I'd be delighted if we could be friends again, beyond LinkedIn reactions. But our lives have moved on and I understand that. So I'll see you in dreams.
Until the next time I miss you too much to keep it inside,
K