Notes to self,
mostly retrospective.

“They weren't giving me mixed signals. I was mixing their attention with my hope.”

“I called it patience for eight months. It was availability, and they never once had to ask for it.”

“Nothing was wrong, which is how it lasted a year. Nothing was right either.”

“I wasn't in love with them. I was in love with the version of us that kept almost happening.”

“I spent a week decoding four words. I'd like the week back more than I'd like the answer.”

“Sometimes closure is just realising you already have enough information.”

“A boundary I only enforce when I'm already upset isn't a boundary. It's a warning I keep forgetting to send.”

“Four dates in I'd met their sister on Instagram, their ex in a rumour, and them almost not at all.”

“We had chemistry the way a match has fire. Reliably, briefly, and never for warmth.”

“You weren't asking for too much. You were asking the wrong person for it.”

“We never argued. We just took turns being quietly disappointed and calling it being easygoing.”

“We were together in every way except the one where you say it out loud.”