I don’t miss you. Not really.

I think  that I miss you because I’m terrified — petrified even — of never meeting another you. Actually, I don’t honestly want to meet someone like you– I want to meet someone better. A man who can love me without doubt, someone who knows he wants to be with me and who doesn’t make excuses why it’s not the right time or he’s not in the right place. I want someone who is gloriously happy like I am, not shamefully sad and despairingly bitter. I felt pieces of your heart because I dug them out, not because they were readily available. Those pieces were terribly tender and dark.

But I imagined them rose colored.

I prayed for them to change, to let me hold them. Just for a minute. I prayed for you to love me unconditionally as I felt for you. I wanted you to love and want me — to not be able to live without me so much that it ached. So much that you ached like me. That you swallowed goblets of tears almost every single day for the past two and a half years since the day we met. Since the day I fell for you… Stupidly. Crazily. Instantly.

That’s what I miss, I think.

Not you exactly — but the me who fell for you back then. It was a me that believed people, men could really change. It was a me that had patience beyond measure, hope against any prevailing odd. It was a me who put up with more than she should to love the boy she hoped could.

Could love her. Could be the one. Could be different.

Now, I’m harder. My shell is tougher and it takes quite the effort to break through. My guard is up, along with my expectations and what I’m willing to accept and what I’m not afraid to walk away from. In some odd twist of my personal dynamic, ever since you, I’ve hungered to be single more than I’ve desired to be with someone.

Because the next someone, whoever he is, wherever he may be– has to be the final someone. After you, my heart isn’t willing to risk again. It’s not bursting and vibrant enough to take a chance on being shattered or dissolving into a darker shade of red. It’s finished being the forgiving gal at home and it’s ready to be completely swooned.

No, I don’t miss you. Not really.

I don’t miss the longing and the pain you brought to my life — though I’m sure, it was never intentional, my dear. I don’t miss staring into eyes that never could look back with sincerity. I don’t miss their hollow depths that I searched for any void to tell my otherwise. I don’t miss the back and fourth, and the desperate feeling of being disposable and not worth fighting for.  I don’t miss feeling like you were always so far away, even when you were lying naked next to me. I don’t miss feeling like I had to always be the positive one, the woman who was always ready and there to please, not the girl who needed something in return. I don’t miss the endless curiosity for change and the sunken feeling that nothing would.

Not really, anyway.

But I do miss being able to love so freely and with such naivety. I miss the me that still believed. The me who was beautiful in all the ways that only a girl fresh to the city, fresh to reveries about a man whose possibilities were actually illusions. I miss the me who used to love you. The me who held onto silly, frivolousness hope.

And now, the only hope left is that I’m able to love someone else a little more. I don’t miss you, not really. But I miss the me before you. Really, I really do.

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