I still miss you sometimes.
One chilly Saturday night, you saw my ex had texted me that, and you threw a fit. In turn, I was angry: how is it my fault that my ex texted me something like that out of the blue? I didn’t understand. Also, I didn’t understand how my ex could possibly still miss me, given that we had broken up over a year ago.
But now, 5 years and 2 serious relationships later, I get it.
Because I still do miss you sometimes.
I miss you when it’s wedding season and I remember picking out wedding color motifs for us.
I miss you when I walk by a certain photography store where we pretended to be engaged so we could pick out a wedding package.
I miss you when my peers started having children, because we had our hearts set on four kids with names already picked out.
We had blueprints for the future. We were to be wed by the time I turned 27; we were to have our first child before I turned 30. We would have a judge officiate our wedding, seeing as we didn’t want the ceremony to be dominated by religion. We would live in Bulacan, which would be close enough to Quezon City but still far enough to get away from the metro’s bustling noise.
We were supposed to live happily ever after, together.
The shame I have for feeling this way can be overwhelming. Why am I still hung up over the what-ifs? Why do I still feel a pang in my chest at the thought that you might go ahead and have kids of your own, without me in the picture?
Regardless of the reason, I can’t deny it: I still miss you sometimes.
It may just be the idealized version of you: the one that after all these years, I have romanticized in my head. My memories of you are thick with the fog of nostalgia that makes it hard to separate dreams from reality. We separated for a reason, even if it broke both of our hearts.
As much as I want to say that I have completely moved on, I regret to say that when my peers celebrate their big moments – engagements, weddings, pregnancies – I still think of you. And I still miss you sometimes.