*From the vault (notes app, cuz only Her Campus could get me to do this). Because anyone feeling like this is most definitely not alone. There is so much you haven’t known yet. There is light at the end of the tunnel, you know. Trust me.*
“Do you miss it? Dating?,” my friend asks after her break up.
“Dating?” I say, silently wondering, “Don’t you mean being in love?”Â
Looking at someone as though they’d ripped the stars right out of the sky to put them in your eyes.
Someone who you’d do anything and everything for, because God, they look so beautiful when they smile. Especially when it’s that smile they reserve only for you.
Someone who laughs at all your jokes. Even when you completely screw up the punchline.
Someone who looks at you and knows exactly how you’re feeling by that one gaze. My social battery is only ever full around you, but that gaze gets me through the last couple of conversations. I’ll cope. Only for you, though.
Someone who asks about your day, like they actually care. And then, somehow, make you so nervous with those goddamn butterflies fluttering in your stomach that you stumble over your words, and can only ever blush.
“No”, I say, as she scoffs at me,”I don’t miss being in love. Not even a little bit. Not at all.”
Because being in love means you put yourself in the position to get hurt. It’s like handing someone a loaded gun, and hoping they don’t shoot you right in the heart.
It means they could take those stars and instantly replace them with tears, such that the cracks in your heart would be visible to the whole world. Your world now. Minus them.
It means you’d do anything to have them back, have them smile at you the way they did – without that little smirk of indifference, that tinge of disconnect and resentment. God, it feels like a knife ripping right through the heart they held so delicately. It was only ever theirs to break, but the shift is jarring.
Someone who laughs at jokes where you’re now the punchline. Those giggles you once loved, they give to someone else. Someone that’s not you. Someone that’s smiling at your misfortune and their own luck. That sound you loved, you now associate with pain.
Someone who you look at, and see the anger, the hurt, the hatred in their eyes. You used to be an open book they loved reading. You’re now a chapter they despise, the one they just flip through. You will try to keep your eyes from welling, your throat from closing up because your friends told you to never let them see what they’ve done to you.
They will still know, though, because they’ve always known you better than you’ve known yourself, haven’t they? An invisible string, forever tying you to them, as tangled as it gets with all the attempts to break free.Â
Someone who you still wanna tell everything to, who seemed to understand you. The only difference being that they no longer smile and make your stomach do its little loops, your mind its little happy dance. They are so far out of reach, it feels like a hammer straight to the pieces of your heart they left behind. Your best friend. Just not yours. Not anymore.
How could I miss that? The happiness/ the pain. The giddiness/ the pain. The constant yearning. The feeling of being so completely lost. Alone. Without you (them).
The funniest part is, if I’d do it again, I’d only ever do it for you. You’re the only one who’d be worth it, even after everything.Â
The irony. God, it makes me laugh that giggle you’ll spend the rest of time hating, trying to forget. Trying not to miss how we felt. Trying to pretend it was all just a lie, just for fun.Â
You used to make me laugh, I now laugh at the idea of you. Zinged with a tiny bit of hurt, of anger, of regret – and a twinge of sadness & mirth. Fair enough, isn’t it – don’t you realise you deserve it?
So no, I don’t miss dating – I miss that. You.
Edit: Wrote this a while ago, and I wish someone had told me then – yes, you do feel like that again. It’s stronger, it’s better, it’s everything you already had and everything you’d wished you had. You ARE okay.