Is it Better to Speak or to Die?

What do you do when you realize you waited too long to tell someone how you really feel? Not only that, but that you waited too long to realize it yourself? Now all you can do is sit alone and fantasize about how different things could’ve been if you had only acknowledged sooner that the person standing in front of you was one of the few people who truly understood you, and who cared enough to even try. What were you so afraid of? Rejection? The only thing there was to lose was something I never even possessed in the first place. My thoughts are consumed with these words unsaid. How I wish I could tell him about all the ways he made me feel seen. How he would make me smile so hard my cheeks ached. How he challenged me to see new avenues of life. How he made me feel safe. How I missed him when we were apart. How I would get butterflies when he looked at me with his hazel brown eyes; locking into place all our inside jokes and indescribable moments. His touch. His laugh. His everything.

But now it’s all gone, like it never even existed at all. Could it have all just been in my head? Did I construct a warped reality of this person to fill my unquenchable loneliness and search for connection? For a time, he was the thing that made me feel the most alive. Days began to feel like seconds, and when he left it was as if our time had been unjustly cut short; that the bubble we were floating in had popped and I was free-falling toward the harsh, frigid concrete below.

Now his image is dissipating into memory, sure to be forgotten and laughed at once I am again ignorant to the light that is him. To know him was to have a thick, red curtain pulled back to reveal a beautiful kaleidoscope of wonder and joy. And no amount of time gazing upon this scene will be enough. You’ll feel as though you could escape into this world forever, if only the curtain could be pried open just a second longer.

But it can’t. And he will never know the impact that he had on you. So it’s on you alone to dispense of the regret and longing that you have for all that you want to express to him, but can’t.