From there, our conversations started to pick up again.
This time, she had been the one to send me a New Year's message first.
I responded enthusiastically. New Year's is a party, after all.
And I had gotten rid of my reservations about her. Besides, it wasn't bad to have back a friend who I could talk about any kind of nonsense with. But that was really all I thought of her. A friend. We would never be anything more again. Someone like her, who couldn't value me or a relationship with me over whatever messed up ideals she had, wouldn't change.
But that didn't mean I couldn't be friends with her. So, I unblocked her.
I could still enjoy conversations with her, far removed from the actual status of our relationship. I had to keep an emotional distance from her, to avoid falling into a similar pattern as before.
We wouldn't be getting back together. Ever.
---
I couldn't tell if being unblocked was good or bad.
It was like I had him back, but not quite.
We were friends like before, we would talk, text, and call on occasion. He behaved just as I remembered. He was just as funny, just as pleasant. He still had the same hobbies and habits. I tried to be as normal as possible too, despite the fact that my heart would often squeeze whenever he did or said anything to remind me why I liked him.
I was happy that we were at least talking again. But there were these moments of sadness that I would feel at times when I could sense him judging my existence. Sometimes it was subtle and almost natural, like him being surprised by things about me that I thought he already knew. Other times it was palpable in the air. Like when I would make an off hand comment about our friendship and he would just get quiet.
But I could never bring it up or even secretly resent him for it. My guilt wouldn't let me. Because I was the one who had broken up with him. I knew that that was the reason why he would sometimes act like that.
I didn't know what he had been doing for those months that we weren't in contact, but I got the sense that his view of me had changed a lot in that time.
I felt frustrated and misunderstood.
I considered our relationship often and mentally rehearsed what I could say to him to try to explain myself all day and night.
But I never actually said any of my rehearsed thoughts to him.
I tried to convince myself that it was okay to be misunderstood by him for the rest of my life. That it wouldn't make that much difference. After all, we were interacting just fine, for the most part.
He didn't need to understand me completely. We didn't have that kind of relationship.
Not anymore.
And that was none other than my fault.
---
At times, I would be reminded of everything I had come to hate about her.
That cowardice. That unwillingness to stand up for herself. That surrender to circumstances as if she couldn't do anything to change it.
At times like these, I could scarcely stop the poison from being spit from my mouth.
Which was something I hated about myself.
I could hear the slight hurt in her voice in her response, or the frustration and sadness in the air when she couldn't even bring herself to say anything back.
But I steeled myself to just move past moments like that. She was the one who did me wrong. She should've been the one to change.
And she was the one who always came back despite all that.
She was the one who replied right away all the time, she was the one who got excited when I was around.
She was the one who still couldn't let go.
---
I tried to be that girl who could bounce back from a breakup stronger. I listened to all the breakup songs and sang my heart out to tell myself that I was over him.
But seeing him be normal made me feel so silly for still having these feelings. It felt so illogical that I held onto my feelings for him when I was the one who said we should break up.
But I still felt incapable of letting go. Every night, I would think of him. It wasn't so different from the time when I was blocked, but this time, I did have a more direct way of contacting him.
So I was back to staring at our DMs, staring at the blank text box, staring at the blinking cursor.
And I'd drift off to an uneasy sleep every time, sometimes 'blessed' with some interaction with him the next day, only for that interaction to feed my lonely thoughts at night.
I was happy when I was with him, if only for those moments. But that only deepened and prolonged my longing for him when we were apart.
And the worst thing was knowing that I was the only one feeling like this.
Sometimes, he would do things that made me suspect that he still sometimes thinks about me the way I think about him. Like when he would let on that he saw my posts or even something that I had linked in my bio.
If he saw something linked in my bio, that means he was on my profile. But there aren't very many reasons to check someone's profile. Maybe he looks up my profile because he misses me the way I miss him?
I would allow myself to be deluded with these thoughts even though I knew deep down that he wasn't putting the same meaning in his actions that I was interpreting.
But I really hoped that he would think about me as much as I thought about him. I didn't want to be the only one suffering over our past relationship.
At the same time, I would never wish my painful loneliness on anyone. I still wish he'd be bothered by me a little bit, though.
I wanted to be loved, I wanted to be wanted. It was a feeling as natural as any human would have.
But for me, it wasn't as simple as being loved and wanted. I wanted to be loved and wanted by him.

YOU ARE READING
How can you let go when I still love you?
RomanceTwo teens who couldn't have it work out.