i commonly mistake the pang of feeling really alone for the pang of lovesick.

in fact, most of the times i have ever said or thought the words; i miss you, what i really meant was; i am feeling desperately lonely in this moment and wished you felt it too so we could understand together and not be so alone.

all this time (five years or my-whole-life) i have been mistaking the pang of loneliness for heartbreak or love or longing when it is really only feeling. sad or lost or homesick or tired for a moment.

every weakeness is not love. we would have been a lot better knowing this from the start.

nope, i was right. i really do hate post-modernism.

somewhere before or between ceasing to be twenty-one and starting to be twenty-two i realized that i am really happy and okay. last night over desserts and conversation about god and kurt vonnegut and grandfathers and pints of beer, enjoyed with my best girl, i glimpsed myself quick in a mirror and thought, that girl looks happy.

we’re all out of false-starts and we’re not sixteen anymore. what a comfortable thought.

thought of you and where you’d gone
and let the world spin madly on.

one year later i threw away an envelope of me and you. pictures and emails and cards and declarations and memories.

i kept two memories.

a photo of us smiling big. half of your face is missing but you still look handsome and sweet. i look happier than i remember ever looking. and a letter, the one where you said love, twice, even though you sidestepped the words outloud.

i choose selective memory. i choose to think of you sometimes, maybe late on a sunday night in june or when the trees turn in september. but mostly i choose to be just okay without you.