The complexity of human emotions is impossible for our simple minds to fully comprehend. When the emotional wheels start turning, the brain releases a host of chemicals, causing a series of fascinating reactions throughout our bodies and, in some almost magical way, determining how we feel.
Thinking about someone who isn’t thinking about you is agonising. Missing someone you’re not entitled to miss is worse. It’s a mixture of embarrassment, vulnerability, and helplessness. It is a bittersweet sentiment where your heart and mind are in conflict. You’re stuck in a swirling black hole and supernova combination, exploding outward and pulling inward at the same time. Missing someone exposes us to loneliness and gives us time to appreciate them. We also learn independence as we navigate the darkness and endure emptiness, leading us to seek joy and peace from within ourselves. There is pain in the process, but also maturity from the grief and excitement in the growth. We will never finish growing, because we are perpetually learning.
Sometimes you have to cut certain people out of your life because you don’t want the same things at the same time. You assume he doesn’t want all of you while hiding pieces of himself. You quit playing his game because you don’t agree with his rules, knowing there are no winners in the end. You shut down and move on.
At first, you miss him. Your heart aches for him, and you spend every moment replaying the last time, the last kiss, the last hug, the last touch, the last smile. One day, a minute goes by when he’s not on your mind. The next day, it’s five or ten minutes. Over time, you notice that you haven’t thought about him in a whole week, because life is full of people and distractions. After a few months, spanning years and over a decade of this, he’s just a tiny speck in your memory.
Then you discover something new about your history, and the missing puzzle pieces leave you flabbergasted as you stare at the complete picture. In an instant, that little speck explodes into a full-blown desire, and all of those past feelings come rushing back. How can a moment from adolescence still reach me here?
You realise just how much you’ve missed him. You miss him more than you remember him, a haunting truth that slips through the silence you thought was safe. “Stop it,” you tell yourself as you try to block out the amatory flashbacks. It is unfair how an outdated confession can impact you, stir up intoxicated passion, and evoke awkward questions. Honesty is not always the best policy when there is no future. Unrequited love is for naive adolescents. I am far too insatiable and pedantic for such novelty.