You know, I don’t want to be angry or bitter or (insert negatively loaded adjective here)

but sometimes, when memories come crashing toward me like a fucking tsunami, I can’t help cursing you and wishing you’re miserable.

I loved you. Actually, there’s a high chance I still do. I kept making excuses for you. I wanted my friends to actually like you. I even considered following you to Canada or Australia or (insert first world non-Asian country here) when all my life the only place I really dreamed of going to was Japan.

It makes me so angry to think I wasn’t worth the effort. That you got into this relationship without proper consideration, even when you had me wait for months, believing you were doing that so when our time comes, we wouldn’t be easily crushed. You made me believe you wanted us to last. You did.

I can’t even look at my inbox now. And as much as I want to delete your thread, I can’t, because, in all honesty, I’m still hoping we’d get another shot.

But on most days, I wonder if it’s even worth giving a second try.

On most days, I just want to fuck you over.

I miss you, love

I miss your hands, love. Your slender white fingers which you once intertwined with mine, the night we half-drunkenly kissed in front of our conniving audience. How the feel of your palm against my palm was more than a mere brushing of skin against skin. And how the cliched act of holding hands on a rainy evening felt like a night spent lounging on the living room floor sipping on a warm cup of cocoa, a small fire crackling in the hearth.

But I cannot hold your hand now. Not when there are distances between us, both metaphorical and not.

Your last text message was five days ago. I don't remember if you sent another one after that, something that wasn't worth saving, which I may have ended up deleting. But there are things I learned about love and loving over the past five days. Things I may have already known, but have forgotten, as well as things I am picking up for the first time.

I have learned to deal with this longing without having to constantly put myself in an inebriated state, to break out of my self-indulgence. I have learned that to be with you, I must be without you. That needing does not equate to loving. And that the un in unhappy is but a prefix I can always omit, if I so choose.

I miss your hands, love. How walking down a crowded hall with my hand in yours lacks the perfection so often read and written in fiction, and instead reconfirms the reality that even imperfect can be beautiful. There were no sparks, no fireworks, no electric feel. There were only you, me, and a bag of groceries.

I miss you, love.

My clearly idealized beloved,

You make me believe that for romance to exist, familiarity needs be evaded. Sometimes, once distance is closed, no amount of imagination suffices to cast glamor on a thing. In ignorance one finds no depth, but the shallowness — nay, flatness — of its topography at least allows one to set up those intricate mind games that craft bliss — that lead to the unguarded smile, the coy upward glance, the running in corridors in the middle of the night giggling in fits and spasms while waving flaming lingerie in the air (no, not really).

Nietzsche said, "A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love." This is why I do not wear my glasses when I gaze at mirrors to look at you.

To you, who has made residence in my head

Please know that I am, by no means, imposing on you the duty of feeding my worn ego. I, however, would not deny that these days, on mornings, especially, I find you in the backseat of my head doing nothing in particular, just haunting me, I guess, like the ghost of a failed relationship. You remain a ghost until, finally, a message is delivered with a beep: good morning or something else, and suddenly you're human again and I feel a little special for a while.

I want to fall in love with you.

I want to fall in love with you.

No special reason behind it. I just do. As you probably know, I've been wanting a boyfriend for months now, but Lady Luck hasn't been on my side. There were a couple of guys who came along, but neither of them were my idea of boyfriend material.

I'm not saying you are, but I realized I quite like you, and that makes all the difference. See, I don't remember much about you, except that you were with my cousin for about a year or longer and that I met you once before (only to embarrass myself by drinking beyond my limit and throwing up). I have a vague memory of talking to you about my cousin when you were no longer together. It was about her relationship with her then new boyfriend. Something you said about cherishing her stuck, for some reason, and since then I've convinced myself that breaking up with you was one of the most stupid things she's ever done in her life.

I probably shouldn't have initiated the online conversation that led to this. By this, I mean this—all this talking we do through text, sometimes through chat.

I mean, it's probably nothing.

But I must admit I've been deriving some sort of felicity from our correspondence.

Which is probably wrong. We're friends, aren't we? For me, at least, we are. I'm too scared to ask you anything because it might put you off and cause you to distance yourself from me, so I hold myself back from throwing stupid questions in your direction and plague myself instead with torturous what-ifs lacking definite answers.

I want to fall in love with you. The want in this statement implies a consciousness on my part, a decision waiting to be made. Should I jump or shouldn't I?

I really don't know.

I've been trying to weigh the pros and the cons, but I have trouble organizing the chaos in my head, so I still haven't arrived at a conclusion. Only one thing has been fully established so far: I like you. And, inevitably, I find myself hoping you'd like me too.

When such hope begins to burn in my system, I panic. And for good reason. I am putting myself in a vulnerable position because of this hope. Don't I always say that hope leads to heartbreak? And I honestly believe that. Slowly, I am becoming attached to the experience of getting good morning messages from you, of being said good night to. Then I wonder if it's you or if it's the attention I am snagging from you that has this warm feeling circling in my chest. Twice I had thanked you for your attention, and twice you'd jokingly called me emo for it. I really do appreciate it though.

I'm overanalyzing things, I know. It would be much easier to just ask you, of course, but it's too risky to do so. Besides, we've only just been talking for a week, so what the hell, right? I'm scared of freaking you out, so I'll shut up for now.

And I know you probably won't get to read this but I'm writing it anyway, just to get the shit off my head even just for a second.

I want to fall in love with you.

But according to societal norms, it's too early for love so I will like you for now. I'll make an attempt to extinguish the tiny flicker of hope buried under my skin, but I'll hold on to the possibility of you getting me a pack of Life Savers, just as you said you would.

That day, when I finally saw you again, my heart raced I couldn't help fidgeting with my phone. Games are a good distraction so I consumed the remaining time trying to beat a tough level in a game called Taiko no Tatsujin. You said I looked like I wanted to smash my phone against a wall. I probably looked retarded. I wish I were cute instead.

I don't remember much about you, but I don't think I can forget you now.

I want to go out with you on a movie date or something. Hang out with you at an empty parking lot and talk to you about the stupidest things. But I can't ask you out. I'm not brave enough. Not because I'm scared of rejection but because it might mean having to give up on the inside joke involving mouthwash and the poring faced emoticon. And more than being rejected, it's losing these things that keep me from popping the question.

And then there's you. I mean, this has been all about me, me, me so far, so let's talk about you. You do have someone you like, don't you? Maybe someone you love, even. Of course, I'm only making assumptions, and if there's one piece of advice I get told often by my friends, it's to stop assuming. Easier said than done, though.

This is so damn complicated.

I want to fall in love with you.

And if this keeps up, I might just do.