You Do Not See Me.

You don’t really love me. The truth is, you don’t even miss me very much. How can you, when you hardly know who I am? You carry a faint fondness for some idea of me in your head, like an image you wish to shock to life when you say three nice things to me. You sound tired, you sound exasperated. I realise now that that has little to do with me, and even less to do with our construct of love. It has to do with who you are as a person, what the things in life represent themselves as to  you, in your frame of mind, from your personality. I have spent months chasing after your heart, I would spend a million more, were it not made clear to me that it is fruitless. The truth is, the hard cold truth is, that I do not miss you anymore. I do not miss you anymore than I miss a friend whose name I can no longer recall. When you say you miss me over the phone, the words ring hollow. They lost their meaning when no sounds came to respond to it, from my own mouth, of my own volition.

I tried to warn you about this day. I cried, and I fought and I manipulated your fragile ego in an attempt to say it to you, without crudely using the actual words. I played rotten games with your good nature in order to get you to understand to not take my affections lightly, that my hurt is real, and that I really do need you right now. You always gave me what I desired, when I asked for it. It satisfied you, and I always felt you breathe a sigh of relief afterward as if you had accomplished some tedious chore. I never felt greatly about it. It never occurred to you to discover my soul, my spirit. My flesh and the actions wrought from it were only of substance. If nothing was spoken, what can you be expected to hear? I detested that I prostrated my pride before your feet in a feeble aim at gaining your compassion. I got nothing but silly rebukes and after a point, even the jokes were not funny. My quarrel isn’t with your business, or your career. It isn’t with the fact that I do not understand and no longer respect the degree to which you prioritise what you prioritise. I adore passion, in all its forms; it was part of the magnetism that led me to you in the first place. This is no longer true. I cannot force you to feel things, and I cannot instruct you on the appropriate behaviour for a lover. I can beseech you to miss me, plead with you to think of me in your spare time. I’m not more narcissistic than any average individual, or so I like to believe, but I’d like to know that I am worth spending a few moments wasting thoughts over. I have no qualms with your late hours or how they ship you around like they own you (Even soldiers going to war are given time to say goodbye). All I ever wanted was that with all the holes in your life, I could fill up a tiny one. Knowing that you needed me would have been enough for me to stay nestled in that corner of your chest forever. I would have shut out everybody who told me to leave you, I would have said, no, I am needed and that is enough. But you do not need me, or my attentions. You need someone pretty and slender, who will warm your bed once every six months, who will carry own with their own life in spite of yours and never have you know what’s behind their eyes.

You hardly remember the expressions of my face, let alone the depth of my soul. If I waited long enough, you would even forget my last name. Yet you would claim that you cared, yet you would insist that you miss me. What is that you miss? Surely not my body, you never liked it. Then is it my personality? But you hardly knew that I played the Piano until last month, when I deliberately played it while on the phone with the pathetic hope that you might enquire about it. Maybe it’s my youthful innocence, the way you get to chide me, patronize me and get away with it every single time. My innocence will fade, perhaps it has already faded with the writing of this letter. It must be my smile then. You have often remarked that you miss that silly grin on my face. It has to be my smile. What of it though? I cannot smile simply and forever for your sake. I cannot simply be happy and pose for you. There is a person behind this expression; there is a person who you failed to notice this whole time.

You can’t buy my smile with 3 words, and an emoticon. You can longer elicit it from sharing tidbits and pictures of your material world. They don’t wow me anymore, they don’t make me gaze in wonder and suddenly want to be by your side.

I realise that this is unfortunate timing. Your grandmother just passed; you say you were quite close. When you talk about her, I feel for a fleeting second that I speak to a real person. Then you shrug and say, that’s life, we’ve got to move on, don’t we? And you disappear again behind a screen of practical decisions. I lose you again and again. And then I think that maybe I never had you. We discussed this once, on some sunny afternoon. You told me you’d only ever loved someone truly and deeply once, you doubted you’d ever love again. It would take you time. You always say you need time, that you aren’t able to express your emotions, that you aren’t too vocal about your feelings. It was your stoic nature that drew me you, I admit; your strength to persevere any storm. But you lay next to me, naked, and told me that you could not love. Yet you had loved. That pointed to some deficiency in me, did it not? Maybe it did not, maybe it is really a problem for you. What hurt is that you never tried, you said you did, but you didn’t.

I waited six weekends to see if you would call without me asking you to. You failed me each time. I don’t want you to call so I can be doted over. I wanted us to know each other as two souls that want to come together. You won’t let me however, and you refuse to try. Eventually, your replies didn’t bother me too much, and I stopped being mad. Eventually, the sound of your voice didn’t drag me to full attention, your words no longer held significance. Eventually I stopped hovering at your door, and listening for my name to come up in your conversations.   

I once jokingly told you, though you thought I was being serious, that I was in love with someone else. You replied intermittently to those string of messages, clearly it was not of urgency to you to know the answers. When you did ask for them, you simply asked for a solution. I did not take the charade further, as the response baffled me beyond all comprehension. I wished to turn around and ask of you what solution you saw fit to my attentions being fixated elsewhere.  Whether you wished for some kind of explanation, or simply wish me good luck for the future and part ways.

You know that I have withdrawn, and yet you do nothing of it. You do not fight me and you do not demand that I speak to you as I did before. It only confirms my suspicions that you do not want me, but are too scared to admit it, lest you tarnish your good nature. Even as you read this letter, you’ll sigh and you’ll agree. You’ll shrug and say that you respect my decision but that you really do care. Perhaps you do, perhaps you don’t. What matters is that I can no longer spoon feed you love and myself misery with the same hands.  You force me to make you mean less and less every day, maybe it is not your fault, it is simply your way.

Do not ask me what I want from you,

It’s not something you could purposely do.

I used to want to make you mine,

But now I have better things in mind.