if we still talked

It’s not often I find myself missing you.

Maybe it’s because of the last thing you said to me. Maybe it’s because of how long it's been since I last saw you and new people have come in to fill the spaces you left. But—and this is what I believe it is—I think I don’t miss you because my life became easier after you were gone. 

Would that make you sad to hear that? To know that after the initial hurt and confusion I only felt a quiet breath of relief when I realized I wouldn’t ever have to speak to you again? That I could leave the chaos of your world behind? I’ve always heard that the opposite of love is indifference, and I can’t believe how true it is because you rarely cross my mind. That’s how I know I don't miss you. You don't cross my mind except for times like today when I hear a song that hits me a certain way, like a drop of rain on a petal, quiet and weighty, and it makes me feel too many things all at once, and I wonder who to tell. And that's when I remember that the only person who would ever understand this feeling, the art of this melody, is you. And I wonder if you’ve heard this song before and if it made you feel the same way too. 

 

These moments are the only times I find myself thinking of everything we were and everything we planned to be. It feels strange to look back on it, like I'm revisiting memories that don’t belong to me. Like the moments I’m looking at can’t possibly be from the life I’ve lived. Because our friendship was just a movie, a cinematic experience that we performed on the stage of life for friends and spectators. And we were masterful in our roles, so good in fact that even we convinced ourselves it was real. 

 

But then the movie ended and the illusion broke, and the tape was thrown in a closet, doomed to collect dust. 

 

That’s why it’s okay I don’t miss you. That’s why it was better to have a clean break with no long drawn- out goodbyes. That’s why it’s okay that the loss didn’t sting. It was all make-believe. 

That’s the truth of you and me. 

 

*************

 

It's a nice flowery metaphor to compare us to a movie, to reduce our friendship to a mere performance. But it doesn’t quite fit, trying to wrap this all up in a neat little box. And it’s untrue and a bit dramatic to categorize things in absolutes. It’s like the way you can’t characterize someone as all good or all bad. People are a multitude of things. 

 

You and I were multitudes. An infinity, we used to say. 

Infinities aren't supposed to end. 

 

The truth is that our friendship ended why every friendship ends: what had connected us in the beginning had grown so small we couldn’t even remember what it was to begin with. 

 

Sometimes I try to remember now. That thing, that feeling that bonded us. That made me think you were a soulmate that I had lost in another life and had finally found again in my new one. 

 

We used to laugh about how different we were, liked to explain to others how not only was our friendship paradoxical but how we were paradoxes ourselves. “Kait acts like she’s the devil, and I act like I’m an angel,” you’d say. “But really she’s the angel, and I’m the devil.” 

 

And then I’d say “I am an angel. But the devil and god are raging inside me.” 

 

This was my favorite part of our performance—how we could appear so strange and unmoored to others and then laugh about how ridiculous it was later. Like we were playing a game. Like it was us against the world in our pretense. 

 

Maybe that means we knew it was an act the entire time, and we knew one day it would have to end. 

 

After we finished laughing, I’d remind you, “The devil and god really are raging inside me. And there’s really an angel in you. You need to remember that you’re good sometimes.” 

 

Maybe that’s what connected us in the beginning. Maybe the devils and angels in us saw each other and recognized faces; maybe they saw a glimpse of something familiar and it felt like home. Maybe our devils found that the hurt we carried was born out of the same kind of wound, that our fire and resilience came from the fierce demand to be uncontrolled and uncontained. Maybe our angels saw the truth that redeemed us from our flaws: that our only true want was to know we were loved and to not be left alone. 

 

Maybe it’s the fact that back then you and I ran on dreams. 

 

Maybe it’s the fact that we were so different that we were actually the same. 

 

It’s when I think about these things, when I remember laughing with you, that maybe I start to miss you for a brief moment. But maybe it's not that I miss you; maybe it's more that I hope you're doing alright. 

If we still talked, I wonder if we’d still be saying the same things to each other. If we’d joke about the devils and gods and angels inside of us. I wonder if you’d still tell me I’m beautiful, if you’d still encourage me to give prospective boyfriends a chance when my instinct is to ignore them. I wonder if you’d still give me that same look if I told you that even after all of these years, I feel most myself when I’m alone.

 

I wonder if I’d still need to remind you that you’re good, that you're not only a devil, and it's okay to believe it. 

 

I remember what it was now. Balance. You and I balanced each other out.

 

If we still talked, I wonder if we’d remind each other of that. 

 

If we still talked, I’d send you this song I found today, the one that made me think of you. And I’d tell you how the lyrics swell in me so big that I think I might burst and how it makes me cry because it feels so beautiful and it reminds me of the good things our friendship was decorated with: trust and optimism and hope and belief in destiny. Belief in infinities. That we were meant for something wonderful. That we still are meant for something wonderful, even if we’re apart. 

 

Yes, you and I ran on dreams, and we put on a show for the world, but it was real up on that stage with you. The things I felt, the trust and belief I had in you, it was real. Even at the end when I wasn’t sure how to talk to you anymore. 

 

I believed it when I said you were good. I hope that somehow you’ve learned to believe it too.