It has been over 8 years since things ended. I wanted to choose you. But I was scared. Scared of disrupting my life. Scared that you’d leave me as you left her. Scared everyone would judge me. Scared of breaking his heart. And now I am married.

And you are too now. With a child. And I tried to make you go away. I stopped answering your calls. Blocked you. Did everything I could to become a ghost. I knew that you could find someone better. Someone who was whole. And now I see you online. And I wonder if you search my page for a familiar face as I do yours. I know I shouldn’t. But I hope that somewhere you can feel that I’m thinking of you and somewhere, somehow you think of me too.

I want to not imagine what our life could have been like. Creating together and falling in love. The good. The bad. Everything in between. But somehow. Even after all these years and radio silence, I still think of you. It doesn’t help that your name is spread across the pages of books in my hands and on store shelves. You’re coming to town soon on business.

I saw it online. I want to go in some unrecognizable fashion and see if you exist from afar. To share the same space as you once again. Just to know that you are real and not just some phantom that haunts my memory. I know your family will be there. And when I see the child you’ve created, the one that I wanted with you, in the flesh.

I know that my heart will shatter. And I fear that even as I hid in the shadows, my body will betray me and scream out in agony creating a scene I couldn’t escape from. Would you know I was there? Could you feel my presence from afar? I wonder. When your plane lands in my state. Will you think of me at all? The memory of the woman you once loved. Or have I become such a distant memory you’d never give me a second thought? Perhaps it’s my penance.

I betrayed a man who loved me by loving you first and never stopping. And now I think of you constantly. Like the albatross around the mariner’s neck. I hope you’re doing well. I hope my love for you ends soon. I want to move on. I just don’t know how. Maybe by sending this letter you’ll think of me. I want to see you one last time. To tell you I’m sorry.

To tell you that I never stopped loving you. I wish we could have had a life together. Somewhere. Somehow.

FROM…. Your Ghost