Looking back, I wish I had written everything down.
Memory is a very unreliable thing. The longer something stays in your head, the more it fades away. The more you make new memories, the harder it is to access the ones you want to remember the most. I don't quite understand how that works at the moment, but someday I will.
I don't know why I like remembering things. I guess I get attached too easily.
It was only five months ago when I met you, after all. Four months since I started talking to you. Three months since you started asking about me. Two months since I realized what I felt for you wasn't normal. One month since you realized it too. Three weeks since you found out I love to write. Approximately two weeks since I last saw you.
That is, if memory serves me right.
There was a whole lot of things in between that sometimes jump at me from behind the bushes of my brain. Occasionally, you appear in dreams. Always, you are a daydream. But you had always been a fleeting reality. A thirty-second conversation. A moment-too-long glance. A hesitant touch. A short text that ought to be erased. A series of plans that went unexecuted. I wish I remembered all of them.
But then again, keeping a diary is so tedious and rudimentary. But I wish you had kept one, though. I wish your thoughts took a tangible form. I wish you wrote, and wrote, and wrote the way I do. Because somewhere in this world (more specifically, the internet) you can find concrete evidence of how I was incredibly swept away by you. But nowhere is it written that I had made a dent in your life.
Maybe...maybe I'm just one of the little people.
And maybe...maybe I only existed to you when I was physically there.
You shouldn't be haunting me this much. I shouldn't be looking for you everywhere I go. I shouldn't be hearing you in my favorite songs. I shouldn't be keeping your texts. I shouldn't be aching to talk about you. I shouldn't be missing you. And yet, here I am, doing exactly what I shouldn't be.
I shouldn't be replaying paper-made memories. They are fragile and weak. They were created to be torn up and thrown out. They are easily carried away by the wind. But what can I do? Each time the breeze picks up I hold onto them like hundred dollar bills, and each time a piece escapes I desperately grasp at the air, chasing it down like a lifeline.
Maybe I was nothing to you but a body but I disregarded yours because I was more fascinated with the brain it held. Maybe you only wanted to touch skin but I lived for those eyes-the way they lit up when you had one of your ideas and the way they crinkled at the sides when you laughed. And maybe I liked feeling special, because I don't feel that way often and I don't even consider myself worthy of the word, but boy...it feels good to be called beautiful.
And maybe you became special because I was so sick and tired of the world and you were the same way. I finally found a mind that didn't just think of plants as green and the sun as bright but saw the meaning in hate and the hostility in love. Was it foolish to assume that we were two shells made from the same worn-out leather?
Everything before you seemed uniform. And when our worlds converged, I had no idea I was getting sucked right into the most beautiful black hole imaginable. Suddenly, someone else was verbalizing these thoughts I've always had. Suddenly, I started caring about these things I never gave two shits about a year ago. Suddenly, the world didn't feel so small. Suddenly, I didn't feel so constrained. And suddenly, I became sure there was room left inside me to grow.
I don't know if you are responsible for all of that. I read somewhere, "Love often says more about those who are in love than who they are in love with." I'm not saying this is love. But maybe I saw a galaxy in a star. I've been known to make such absurd conclusions. But even though I realize that, it doesn't mean I believe it. You will continue to be brilliant to me until something proves otherwise.
Maybe you will always be.
