Every Almost

Today is our day.

I had convinced myself that I was fine. Actually fine. I thought I could look at you and not look twice, and hear your name without it stopping somewhere between my ribs. And yet here I am, awake again, fighting a war nobody knows I’m fighting.

I could pretend it’s just the words I have for you. But that would be a lie, and I’m so tired of lying to myself.

A date that was ours

This date wasn’t just a number on a calendar. Out of every month, we had picked one day and decided it was ours. We waited an entire month for it to come back around, like a little cult with two members, a secret language, and a date that belonged only to us. People noticed. They looked at us and wondered what we had that they didn’t. Maybe they envied it.

And then, somehow, the thing everyone wanted became the thing nobody wanted us to become. People change their minds so quickly when love stops looking pretty.

But I’m done with what they thought. I want to know something much smaller: did you want me?

I’ll never be able to prove it either way. Maybe you wanted me in ways you were too afraid to say. Maybe you wanted me at the wrong time. Maybe I wanted you at the wrong time. Maybe that’s the whole tragedy. We wanted the same thing, just never at the same moment.

It was never love. It was never attraction, or comfort, or the way we found each other in a crowded room. It was timing. It was always timing.

The small things

What I remember most are the tiny moments, the ones that meant more to me than anything expensive ever could. I used to imagine just holding your hand. One ordinary day, walking somewhere, sitting somewhere, doing nothing. No grand gesture, no perfect date, no photographs for anyone to see. Just your hand in mine and one day where I could call you mine.

Tag Day came, and nothing happened. Did that stop me? Of course not. I made my own little world inside the world, and for a moment I got to feel like your girl.

I loved that word. I loved annoying you with it.

“Who’s your girl?”

Silence.

“Who’s your girl?”

You’d talk about anything else. Anything, everything, except the answer. I knew you were doing it on purpose, with that quirky little smile that said I know exactly what you’re doing. I’d ask a hundred times if I had to, and you’d find a hundred ways not to answer.

Such a cutie, yaar. And I hate that I remember it. I hate that I remember everything.

Because once, when you said it, my heart didn’t question it. It simply said yes, that’s me. But now, when you say it, something inside me whispers: why wasn’t I before?

Mourning someone who is still here

I’m trying so hard to be the girl who says, “Oh, I’m not emotionally attached, bro.” Like this doesn’t occupy half my mind. Like I don’t notice when you’re gone, or wonder where you are, or whether you’ve eaten. Like I’m not counting how many months are left.

I’ve never been this aware of someone leaving while they’re still here. How do you enjoy someone when your mind has already started mourning them?

How do I walk through the same college after you leave? How do I pass the room where we laughed, or the places where you stood? So much of my college life became you that I don’t know how to separate the two.

And yes, I liked you. I loved you. There, I said it. Don’t ask me if I love you now. I’ll never admit it. I’ll wait a few months and say, “That time, I loved him,” and I’ll be lying to myself again, because if this isn’t love, why does it hurt like something is being taken from me?

I have exams. I have a life. I have things I’m supposed to be doing. And here I am, in broad daylight, having a crisis over a date on a calendar. Just a number, and somehow it remembers for me.

The softness we never named

There were days when two minutes was all it took. Even after we’d said no, we shouldn’t be that, we’d end up somewhere soft, somewhere close, somewhere neither of us wanted to name.

And love has never felt more beautiful than that. Not the dramatic kind people write about with flowers and promises, but the small kind. One of us asleep while the other quietly plays with their hair. Looking at a sleeping face and thinking what a cutie, and instead of saying it, just going smchkmkmkm, kiss after kiss, smushing cheeks, making each other laugh and pretending that wasn’t affection.

We never had to say “you’re cute today.” We had our own language. That’s what we were.

Go

So, listen to me.

If you need to leave, leave. Do everything you came here to do. I don’t want to be the reason you stay behind. If you ever have to choose between me and something important to your life, choose it. Don’t even hesitate. The friend in me expects you to, and the part of me that loved you wants you to become everything you’re meant to be.

Maybe someday I’ll hurt. Maybe I’ll cry, or be angry, or ask myself why I wasn’t enough. But even then, some part of me will know the truth: you were never supposed to make your whole life smaller just to keep me inside it. I don’t want your world to end where I begin. I want you to have your own sky, your own dreams, your own roads, even if one of them takes you away from me.

There’s only one thing I want. Before you go, I want you to know we were more than the touches, more than the closeness, more than whatever we refused to call it. Look back once and tell yourself, “That was something.” Not a mistake. Not an accident. Not two people who couldn’t figure it out. Something real. Something that mattered.

That’s enough for me. If you can remember that, maybe I can let you go.

To our day

Not because it doesn’t hurt. Not because I don’t love you. Not because I don’t want one more of our days. But because sometimes loving someone means wanting their life to grow bigger, even when you know you might not fit inside it.

So go. And I’ll stand here a little while, probably pretending I’m okay, probably failing, probably thinking about your stupid smile and that stupid question. Who’s your girl?

Maybe one day I’ll stop asking. Maybe one day I won’t need the answer, because I’ll know: I was yours for those moments, and you were mine. Nobody, not them, not time, not distance, can take that away.

So, to our day. The one we chose, once a month, just for us. To two people who wanted the same thing but never at the same time. To every almost: the almost-touch, the almost-date, the almost-confession. To every who’s your girl? and every smchkmkmkm. To every moment we pretended wasn’t love because saying it aloud would make it real.

And to whatever we become after this: I hope you’re happy. I hope I’m happy. And I hope that somewhere inside that future, there’s still a tiny place where that day belongs to us.

Like a secret the world once knew, and forgot.

But we didn’t.