Obliviate

Or when I thought I had forgotten the way you smell, but all it took is one scent, one stranger— for the ghost of you to appear in front of me.

All I need is one sleep and a dream of you to undo twelve years of effort to move on and I’ll find myself back to 2014 – to the day I lost you.

In a crowded room,

At a bustling airport,

Shopping malls on weekends,

Visiting our town for the holidays.

Every place that I go,

Every strangers that I met,

My eyes will always seek for yours,

We’ll be 15 again and I’d wake up with butterflies in my stomach because I’d see you in school,

And we talk at the corridor just the two of us as if nothing could separate us except when the bell rang or when we catch our teachers walking up the stairs,

I’d go back to my classroom with smile on my face and I hope when you turn around as you walk back to yours,

I too; managed to make you smile wide that the dimples at the corner of your mouth make its appearance.

I wonder if in that universe,

I’m still your friend as we navigate adulthood,

And if I finally brave enough to tell you that I loved you since we were in high school,

Will you loved me back and I finally have the right to call you mine?

Because in this universe,

We stopped talking at 15 and I stood alone at the corridor in front of my classroom and you stood alone in front of yours until the bell rang.

And in this version of reality,

A decade has passed and I lay alone in my bed wondering how’d things turned out had I tell you how I feel instead of running away,

Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months and months, months turned into almost 2 years. Nobody reached out to me. I deactivated my Facebook after two months of no notifications whatsoever.

To be truthful, I was disappointed. I had a group of best friends of 8 years and none of them checking up on me. I don’t block them on social media and they have few ways to reach out even if I did. They have my instagram, my mom’s and sister’s phone number and my girlfriend’s phone number and instagram. They could’ve reach out but they didn’t. I don’t think they ever noticed that I’ve changed my number. At this point I thought that even if I died, they won’t ever know. Even on my birthday, I don’t received any DM. So I accepted my fate and moved on.

The reason why I decided to ‘went missing,’ was because I was tired. I felt left out. I won’t get any messages unless I texted them first. Sometimes they took days to reply. I mean, I get it. We’re becoming adults with responsibilities. We get busy, I truly get it. But just a simple, “can’t talk right now,” message is enough than no response at all.

Insecurities get the best of me. I leave before they left me. So I ‘went missing,’ and only reached out to people that are reaching out.

They reached out yesterday. With only one message— “the girls missed you.” Missed me? How long will their ‘missing me’ lasts this time? Few hours? Couple of days till they decided they don’t miss me anymore? Is that all my worth to them?

Am I being selfish? Immature?