You Should Have Never Let Me Go
By Alya Mohamed
I’m not dealing with this breakup as well as I thought I would.
I thought I would cry myself to sleep the previous night, wake up the next day with exuberance and move on easy, but it’s a lonely Friday afternoon, I’m drowning myself in tea, break up songs and Thought Catalog articles and the only thing I can feel is your absence. I thought art was designed to save you from loss but I was desensitized in an hour, leaving me as empty as my cup, left waiting for something I’m out of touch with.
As I listen to the one confident line in all of my heart-breaking playlist, I come to one definite conclusion: You should never have let me go.
I was better than what you made me seem. You know, I’d have slow danced with you to your favourite song and talked about our dreams under my red fairy lights. I’d have stayed up late with you listening you tell me about what breaks your heart and what gives you energy to wake up every morning. I mean, we had so much potential, you and I. It may not seem this way right now, but it truly is your loss.
Right now it is my time to be hurt, but when I move on, you will feel my absence the way I have felt yours.
You won’t be able to understand what it is you’re feeling until you spot me one Monday morning in my favourite pink sweater and my infamous dark curls, laughing and singing with my friends. You will realise that it’s me that’s missing and that is the moment when it’ll hit you. So let me admit my soft wrongness; the bitterly honest words your loss has made me feel.
This is what I wish for you, but couldn’t say out loud because it would make me the bad person in our breakup. This is the terrible wish I have for the near future.
I want you to stumble across a million break up quotes that I sent you. I want you to go to my blogs to feel me again. You’ll read the quotes, observe the pictures, listen to the music and you’ll feel my spirit gliding across your room, looking away from you. But when you try to catch it, your hallucination of me will disappear, just like the chance you had left with me.
You’ll distract yourself by listening to music, but the first song that will come up will be the one I played on that cloudy afternoon as you played chess with my friend. You’ll remember the way I smiled at you that day with a dreamy look in my eye and my shy little canine sticking out of my grin.
So you’ll finally resort to the break up songs and quotes that I always showed you. You’ll fall to pieces when you realise no one gave better hugs than I did, but I’m not there to hold you anymore. And you’ll be left with the haunting realisation that you should never have let me go.