My Memory of You

I once had feelings for you.

And you knew it.

You told me you were surprised because you never thought I would actually admit it to you.

Then we exchanged phone numbers.

We started talking privately.

The compliments and pleasantries of social media slowly disappeared, and we stepped into a different kind of relationship.

I knew where I was coming from.

And I thought I knew what you wanted.

I wanted us to become something more.

You only wanted a situationship.

You would only reach out to me in the middle of the night. The rest of the time, you seemed to disappear.

You invited me to co-write an article with you, but when we needed to discuss it, you answered another man's call and talked to him instead of me.

When your father scolded you and you had a panic attack, you texted me from the bathroom at your home.

I comforted you through messages.

One night, after the date you had at your home wasn't going well, you messaged me in the middle of the night.

You told me that the person who had been at your house wasn't a visitor. He was your date.

And you told me that throughout the entire date, you had been thinking about me.

The next day, you messaged me again.

You told me:

"Forget what I said last night. I was drunk."

I didn't ask too many questions.

I simply put those words away in my memory.

Through your writing, I knew you were dating different people.

But not once, during all our phone calls, did you tell me yourself.

Once.

Twice.

Eventually, I brought it up.

I told you that you could tell me if you were dating someone else.

I had no problem with it.

Instead, you asked me:

"What are we?"

Then you told me that from then on, you would tell me whenever you went on a date.

But later, I heard you say it myself during a live podcast.

You and your new date had already been on six dates.

Six.

And that day, we had spoken on the phone.

You still didn't tell me.

So I sent you a message.

I told you that if he liked you too, I genuinely wished you happiness.

I meant it.

And, out of respect for your choice, I decided to take my feelings back.

You told me it was nothing.

There was no serious commitment.

But I still decided to wish you well.

And to step out of the game of being someone's backup.

Then I saw another piece of your writing.

You had gone to your date's home.

And he had taken you into his bedroom.

We weren't children.

I knew what I thought that meant.

Maybe only you and he knew what it actually meant.

But for me, that was enough.

So I unsubscribed from your writing.

I stopped replying to your private messages the way I used to.

Not because I wanted to punish you.

Not because I wanted to hurt you.

I simply needed time to recover myself.

But you remembered my leaving differently.

You told me I had unsubscribed because I was jealous that you were dating someone.

That I had stopped supporting your writing because of it.

You even told me that I had never really supported your writing at all.

I had only been supporting you because I wanted to get closer to you.

And then you told me I was just like every other man.

There was nothing different about me.

I don't have much left to defend.

Because from the way you saw things, we had never been standing on the same line.

I remember answering your calls at three in the morning.

I remember listening when you were having a difficult night.

I remember answering your call at six on a weekend morning after you came home from a night out, and staying on the phone with you.

I remember encouraging you in the middle of the night when you were upset because other writers had failed to acknowledge how much effort you had put into a collaboration.

I also remember when you told me you wanted me to become a paid subscriber, and I said yes—twice.

Those things are all real in my memory.

But you remember a different version of me.

Someone who became jealous when you started dating.

Someone who unsubscribed because I couldn't accept seeing you with someone else.

Someone who never really supported you, but only wanted to get closer to you.

Maybe that is the strangest thing about us.

I kept thinking that if I explained everything clearly enough, you would eventually understand why I left.

But sometimes, the more I explain, the more it sounds like I am trying to defend myself.

So I stopped explaining.

And my memory of you began to blur.

Because I could no longer see your face clearly.

I don't know which version of you was the real one.

And I don't know which version of me was the real one either.

Maybe neither of us was lying.

Maybe we simply walked away from the same story carrying different memories.

And the last message you sent me was:

Bye.

Maybe that was the final line you wrote for this soap opera,

as I quietly walked out of it.

And this time,

I didn't look back.