Dear C
A letter to my ex
Oops. I just found out that you're with someone new.
He looks Korean—tall, has cool sunglasses. You always liked your Gentle Monsters; I always thought they were kinda lame.
My bad, it’s on me, I went to your channel to see your face and found two. I know, I know, boundaries.
I did it because I miss you, and it's hard when you have a vlog. Like trying to quit smoking with a cigarette locked in your top drawer, and you find yourself going to "check out" the drawer every now and then, but this time the key is in your hand, how did that happen? Ah.. Well, too late now. What can you do? Only human after all.
It's confusing to feel heartbroken by this when I was the one who walked away, twice. But, if I’m being honest, I’m still carrying you with me after all this time.
I confess—I’ve been holding on: to memory, to the feeling of the memory, to the memory of the feeling. To gold, tinged with blue, dissolving ever so slowly. You haunt me, but what a pleasant intrusion you are, C.
I've been grieving you quietly in a hundred different ways, in the hollowness that dwells beneath joy, in the melancholy that creeps in when I’m not looking, in the duller green of tree leaves, and in sunsets less spectacular.
I looked through my journal just now, and counted that I wrote about you on 30 separate days. Oh, all the ways I tried to process you.
I once read that homing pigeons can find their way home even when taken a thousand miles away. Deep down, I hope we’re not so unlike that—that we just have to find our way back.
But how does the owner bear it? To wait, not knowing if your bird has been ensnared or lost. To have only your belief that one day it will come back. Or, to abandon belief and forsake this bird, along with the future where it arrives home after having taken the long way back. A romantic could fritter a life time in that waiting.
So tell me that you’re finding your way to somewhere else now, and that I’m not your home anymore. Tell me there’s no constellation for our story, no conspiracy of fate. Disenchant me from kismet and red threads, from Yuanfen and 인연. Let’s roll our eyes at the always and forever. The romantic dies young, and life goes on.
Summer is almost here. The cherry blossom outside my house was in full bloom. As the petals fell, I wondered how you were doing.
The weather is warmer, the days long again, C. Sunlight strikes the trees and the leaves glow that yellow shade of verdant green you know is my favorite. I stop and stare for a while, soaking in the beauty, surrendering to it. Komorebi, a Japanese word which means “sunlight leaking through trees.”
The bay is vibrant and alive, and I know a hill from which the sunset over the skyline is absolutely breathtaking. You would have liked it here—over the past year, I picked out a dozen cafes and god knows how many fun restaurants for us to try out. There's so much to do; all the time in the world wouldn't have been enough, and now there's no time left for us at all.
But that’s alright. Seeing you with someone new, I feel a bit like Bruno Mars singing When I Was Your Man, which makes me laugh—to know how human it is to find myself here, how eye-rollingly common, how comfortingly trite. To live is to break and come back together, stronger, more beautiful. Kintsugi, a Japanese word which means “golden repair.”
So, I’ll leave it here. I'm happy for you, at least, a little bit. I can't mean it fully yet, but some day I will. Only human after all.
Until then.
Love,
E
“There's so much to do; all the time in the world wouldn't have been enough, and now there's no time left for us at all.”
😭😭😭💙🎯