text: Absence Makes The Heart Grow Shallower ‘It's better to be the best version of yourself, then being the second best version of somebody else’ What does that really mean. How do I know if I'm the best version of myself? You could say as long as I'm happy but really, I can't be happy 24/7. So when I am sad, am I not the best I can be? When I'm anything but happy am I not enough? As I write this and as you read this. We are total strangers. You have no idea who I am. I have no idea who you are. But I can tell you before you start reading, I'm so totally in love with you. -- -- -- You know the saying ‘you can read someone like a book’? Well, that's exactly what you are doing right now. You are reading me...a book. Am I trapped in a book? Like some Harry Potter type thing. No, I'm not trapped. I can leave whenever I want. I can stop writing whenever I want. But why would i? If I stop writing, then you stop reading and that means I wont get to see your face looking into mine. I wont see your eyes darting from one word to the next. But I know I have to. You have to move on. You have to find someone, someone real. Knowing that these words will be my last to you makes me ache over every inch of my body. I want to keep writing, even if it's complete nonsense but if I really do love you, which I do, I have to let you go. It's better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. I’m so grateful for the days I spent with you. When you brought me to meet your grandparents. Yes, I may have been in your pocket but I got to hear the voices of the people you treasure just as much as I treasure you. Maybe I'll see you someday. I know exactly what you look like, of course. I studied your face everyday so I could remember every detail of it. Sometimes you would come back to me looking a bit different. Like when you dyed your hair. I will never forget you or how you look. You may forget me but at least for however long you kept reading me, you remembered me. My dreams may be empty without you but I don't want you worrying about me being alone. As long as I have you with me in memory, I will never be alone. -- -- -- I know I need to let you go but this is so much harder than I imagined. I just needed to tell you that you made me the best version of myself, and I'm not happy all the time. I finally understand what the quote means. The best version of yourself is when you are so totally and completely fine with not being happy all the time, not pleasing everyone all the time. Thank you for teaching me this. Although you never said anything to me, I heard you louder than ever. You understood me in a way no one will ever be able to. No words, nothing but silence but as we both know very well, silence speaks louder than words. So even though we didn't use our voices to talk, we were probably the loudest people on planet earth. We were like those people on the dart that don't use earphones or don't wait to answer the call when they've left the carriage. We were so silent that my throat is sore from being as loud as we were. -- -- -- I saw you today. The urge I felt to hug you or just exchange an ‘excuse me’ while walking past you but you looked me dead in the eyes and saw right through me, like I wasn't there. And that's when I realised that I forgot I wasn't really there. People aren't able to see me, that's why I was trapped in a book, because I'm not capable of physically being in the outside world. I'm a ghost. I am dead. I thought I would never get a chance at love because I didn't experience it before I died. But here I am the most in love I could ever be and I'm talking to the love of my life... or if you can call it the love of my death. -- -- -- I know I'm not meant to talk to you but I find myself even more drawn to you than ever these days, if that's possible. As I write this I'm starting to think that you may not love me back. It makes sense. I got to learn about you inside and out but you just learned how infatuated I was with you. You don't truly know me, you never will. It's heartbreaking to feel this way, that you will never love me back. It almost feels like I'm dying again. Death from heartbreak seems like a sad way to die (again) but at least I got to experience heartbreak. Another thing I never thought I could do. -- -- -- People say ‘you see things through your thoughts’ kind of like the saying ‘you can speak things into existence. But no matter how many times I think about you or how many times I say your name, you don't appear. I'm getting frustrated now. Why can't I see you, why can't you love me like I love you? Please, just one moment of love from you will complete me. I might be able to leave this place if you give me the chance to complete myself. -- -- -- I don't want you to appear anymore. I loved you and still love you more than existence and I get nothing from you. Another quote for you; ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’. This absence is making me long for you more, so much more that I'm nearly starting to hate you for not being here with me. Hold me while I cry, while I die and while I long to go back to the days I would see your head peer over my pages.. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, maybe, but it also makes it grow shallower. -- -- -- I may have been too late. Too late to love you. Too late that you didn't love me back. But, I guess it's ‘Better late than never’.