He Never Quite Leaves You

I wrote this for a friend struggling to get over an ex who never quite put himself out of the picture. 

He never quite leaves you. Absent always but never gone. Left behind in little traces: the push of a like button, the beep of a snap. He never says anything. Nothing real or lasting. Just these little moments.

They could mean something, if he wanted you. They hold the promise of what you dream of. In your hands, they would those lovely little blasé moments shared between lovers, signifiers of actual love. Moments just for you that he shares as he smiles fondly, thinking of the way your hair stuck up when you blinked awake in his arms. Moments that say I’m thinking of you, wanting you, that you’re part of my world. Moments you can’t be part of, sent to remind you that he wishes you were there, too.

These aren’t that. None of them are a cry for you. You yearn for that cry in this long wait of nothing. He should tear himself apart to realise what he’s lost and come grasping to retrieve it. But could you even give him that, now? Your memories are so merged with disappointment and longing, yet still you hover, waiting, hoping, from some lonely desperate place inside you.

He doesn’t see you. He never has. You’re a follower. A liker. A notch on his Facebook belt, relegated to the relentless emptiness of his ego. You’re too nice to blame him for that. You’ve seen his darker moments, and his better ones. You’ve seen how real he can be. And love is supposed to fix that, isn’t it? It’s supposed to soothe and heal. The power of it should force him into the light of it, to a place where you can feel wanted.

But he doesn’t want your goodness. He’s not ready for it. And you can wait a whole lifetime for someone to receive the good in themselves, for the big moment to come when they turn to you and say the words you’ve longed to hear. Or for some sort of vindication, at the very least.

But some moments never come, and waiting is just a cage you build for yourself, blocking you from receiving the good that others see in you.