I Want You To Know It Hurts

When I switch the light on in my room I still see the traces of the night before—it’s like everything’s thrown into a cavernous pit of darkness and melancholy. The world is in complete greyscale, like my eyes have never seen what red or beige or blue is. I want you to know that when I open my door, all I see is vast emptiness that mirrors what I am feeling inside. I am left helpless and I can’t cry because I am too weak to cry.

I want you to know that the feelings I’ve felt when I first started conversing with you. Those feelings that made me happy are the same feelings that are lashing my back right now. I want you to know that it pains to remember because all that’s left are memories.

I want you to know that I have been listening to All Too Well by Taylor Swift before I sleep and sing it on my way to work because when something that used to make you smile sheepishly for no reason, when something that makes you feel happy and excited and extraordinary, when those somethings are gone, all that’s left are reveries, you do remember them all too well and it hurts.

It’s like remembering a walk with you when the air was cold. It’s like feeling at home during one of those conversations wherein you didn’t have to pretend to be someone else or hide what you truly feel. It’s like feeling brave to face what the world has to say whenever I’m with you. It’s like seeing that spark that really wasn’t there as how Paulo Coelho said it would be. It’s like imagining the past but seeing the future on a whole new degree.

I want you to know that it scares me to be standing in front of the elevator, waiting for it to open, thinking that the next face I’ll see is yours and the walls I’ve built will come crashing down and spill all the pain out with a single salty tear. I didn’t even know that it’s possible to hate and long for someone simultaneously and it’s making my senses detonate, messing me on so many levels.

I want you to know that it takes all of me to try and collect myself whenever fate decides to cross our paths, put that smile on and look you in the eyes, nod and say “Hey.” I want you to know that I feel like a crumpled up piece of paper whenever I think of you.

But to be honest, I know it shouldn’t hurt because what we’ve had was just an almost relationship. A prospect. One that has a potential to turn into something but didn’t. One that started gradually but ended so abruptly. But it hurts for the reason that it remained a potential. And there’s something in us that didn’t exhaust it to its full capacity.

I want to move on and finally reset my life, but I want you to know that I don’t want to. Moving on means forgetting that I used to love you and that I have to accept the general theory that some people are meant to meet but aren’t meant to be together. I want you to know that that theory hurts because it’s not what I want us to be.

I want you to know all these because I want you to know that I will be OK. I’ll be strong and stand firm despite this litany of pain and heartaches. I want you to know that I am starting to pick the pieces up and be my old self again. I want you to know that it hurts because the pain is the only reminder that it was real, that you were real. This is how it feels—a part of me wants you to care even though I know you wouldn’t…and it hurts.