Even If Nothing Changes

It has been a long time since I thought about you.

The moments when you come into my mind have become less frequent. The reminders have become less frequent too. The things you liked, the things that made you laugh, the conversations we used to have. Even those have started to fade.

I suppose that is what happens when a relationship becomes complete.

Over time, the need for the exchange, the company, the sound of someone's voice, and the feeling of their presence can fade. That does not necessarily mean something went wrong. Sometimes relationships and friendships simply reach a point where they have nothing more to give each other.

That was difficult for me because I do not think we did anything wrong.

At least, not in the way we usually think about wrongdoing.

For me, a relationship begins to change when the growth stops. When we are no longer interested in who the other person is becoming, we can end up reliving who we used to be together.

We tell the same stories.

We remember the same nights.

We laugh about the same embarrassing moments.

We revisit the same family stories and the same drunken memories.

At first, those memories can feel comforting. Eventually, they can become repetitive. There is only so much of the past you can revisit before you begin to wonder why you are still talking about it.

Especially when the person you are remembering is no longer who you are.

I think that was part of what became difficult for me. Being around you sometimes meant being reminded of a version of myself I no longer wanted to return to.

But I also have to take responsibility for my part in that.

I was not always honest with you.

More importantly, I was not always honest with myself.

I spent a lot of time wearing a mask. I withheld parts of myself because I did not like what I was beginning to see. There were things I was struggling with that I did not know how to talk about, so I kept them to myself.

The less I shared, the less there was to share.

And perhaps you did the same.

There was more filtering. More holding back. More deciding what could be said and what could not. When two people begin protecting themselves from each other, the space between them becomes quieter.

Eventually, there may be very little left to talk about except the past.

I used to think that stepping away from you was moving backward.

Now I wonder if it was actually the opposite.

Maybe I was moving forward.

I was choosing to learn from the things I had done. I was trying to become someone I could be proud of. That meant leaving some parts of my old life behind, including parts of myself that had been comfortable because they were familiar.

That does not mean I stopped caring about you.

There are still moments when I think about reaching out.

Sometimes I miss you.

Sometimes I wonder what your life looks like now.

And sometimes I hesitate because I do not know what we would talk about.

Would we fall back into the same cycle?

Would we tell the same stories about the glory days, even though I remember some of those days differently?

Maybe it would be different now.

It would be different if we had continued growing together.

It would be different if I understood more about your current life and if what was happening in it had a place between us.

It would also be different if I had allowed you into more of mine.

That is something I regret.

There were difficult moments when I chose alcohol over connection. I had things I could have shared with you, but instead I tried to numb them. I did not reach out. I did not explain what was happening.

So perhaps the distance between us was not created by one person.

Perhaps we both contributed to it in different ways.

That makes the relationship harder to put away.

There are relationships where someone hurts you and leaving is clear. There are relationships where the ending is obvious because something happened that cannot be repaired.

And then there are relationships like this.

Nothing catastrophic happened.

There was no single moment that ended everything.

We simply became different people.

Or perhaps we became more honest about who we were.

Either way, there was loss.

I sometimes think of it as a relationship with two edges. Holding on could hurt. Letting go could hurt too. There was no way for either of us to walk away completely untouched.

I am moving forward now.

But moving forward does not mean I never look back.

Sometimes I wonder if you will ever catch up with me. Sometimes I wonder if you have already found another path entirely.

Maybe you have.

Maybe I have too.

And still, I miss you.

I can miss you without needing you to come back.

I can remember what we shared without pretending that I want the relationship to return to what it was.

I can regret the things I withheld without rewriting everything that happened between us.

And perhaps that is what it means for something to be complete.

It does not mean it meant nothing.

It means it had its time.

I can be grateful for that time, grieve what ended, accept what I could have done differently, and still continue becoming someone new.

I miss you.

Even if nothing changes.