How are you?
How are you, really?
How does your new role suit you?
Are you happy?
Did life unfold the way you hoped it would?
Have you found peace?
Have you healed?
I dreamed of you last night.
Somehow, it felt like the ending I never had—the ending I should have given myself before I walked away from you.
The fear was quieter this time.
The anxiety no longer gripped me the way it once did.
Even the sense of repulsion I carried for so long had softened into something gentler, something I could finally look at without turning away.
Maybe my mind held on to you longer than I ever admitted.
Or maybe you simply became one of those people who quietly settle into the corners of our subconscious, returning only when we are finally ready to face what we buried.
I’m twenty-six now.
Twelve years have passed, and somehow I still find myself thinking about what happened between us.
I often wonder if I rewrote our story just to survive it.
Did I convince myself that nothing between us was ever real?
Or did I simply tell myself the version of the truth I needed in order to let you go?
Looking back now, I think your love was simply too mature for the girl I was.
I was too young to understand it.
Too young to receive it.
Too young to carry the weight of someone else’s pain.
Sometimes I wonder—
If I had met you later,
would things have been different?
Would I have known how to love you better?
Would I have understood the wounds you carried?
Would I have been able to help you heal?
I don’t know.
Maybe some people arrive exactly when they’re meant to—not to stay, but to shape us into who we’re becoming.
I hope last night was the final time I cried for you.
Not because you no longer matter,
but because I think I’ve finally learned how to carry the memory of you without letting it break me.
If our paths ever cross again, I hope we won’t greet each other like strangers.
I hope you’ll meet my eyes and return my smile.
Not because there’s still a spark waiting to be rekindled,
but because we’ve both lived enough life to forgive the people we used to be.
I hope you’re happy.
Truly, deeply happy.
And if, by some strange turn of fate, you ever read the poems and letters I’ve written over the years, I hope you’ll understand.
I hope you’ll finally see why we could never become what we wanted to be.
Not because we didn’t care.
But because sometimes love arrives before we’re ready to receive it.
And I hope she becomes the woman I wasn’t yet capable of being.
The one who meets you at the right time.
The one who can love you in all the ways I couldn’t.
I hope she stays.
—Joy
