Before.

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3 min readMay 18, 2023

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Now we’re holding hands as not quiet friends, but not quiet lovers — well, we’ll just pretend.”

The thing about long distance relationship is that most often one of them was not ready. No one talked how painful it is when you’re in relationship but you feel like a total stranger to your loved ones.

Before is written for the people who outgrow each other while still clinging onto the versions they once had, to the girls out there who had to change themselves to be someone else because someone you love asked you to, and to the one who always put so much efforts in relationship but in the end it was all useless.

Why do I wanna meet you so bad? What do I do? Which route should I choose? What if it turns into nothing?

Well, it really turns into nothing.

I am hidden in your dorm room again in the end. Familiarity or the unknown. Unhappy with or without you. I have to beg and plead for your attention. Giving me scarps of love-leaving me deprived.

Yet I am the only one who always jumping to fulfill your needs which don’t get the same in return.

Love is supposed to be giving an effort from both parties. Love requires effort in any type of relationship. Sadly there is none in us. I’m the only one who put so much.

Should I continue with your inconsistency?

Being so far apart. The odds were already against us. Somewhere out there whispers,“We could’ve defeated the distance.” But we just didn’t try enough.

Funny how you thought that there was gonna be New York when all you had left behind was emptiness. We could have so much more than that but you were being indefferent. You only talked more about your new friend who I didn’t know and never met. Ironically, you dated her as soon as I left.

So I said to myself, “That’s enough, that’s enough for now.

The next possible step I can take is to just stop. I will go back to the way before by loving you from a distance. At some point, I have to realize that I am doing too much to be there for someone. Did anything ever really count between us or am I just a two year practice round for you?

I said this with the understanding that there is love in letting go and that you might want to remember them for the beauty of it rather than waiting around for something to be bitter around your mind that keeps hurting you.

Like a song without melody. Like a poem without words. Like a journey without destination. That’s what I really felt once I arrived here. We’re totally feel like strangers to each other.

Two worlds colliding but we don’t know how to handle the shake. How do you expect two people to continue to flow in a rhythm together when there is no conscious effort to work?

They said in a failed relationship, it’s hard to say goodbye, because some love is still there even though the relationship failed. But some people don’t understand that it is forgiveness that is the hardest to give even if the relationship already ended.

I wish I could feel how they feel. The couple in the street. I wish you could look at me like they look at each other not the way you only look at me behind them all.

The way we were just pretended being neither friends nor lovers after broke up. It’s so cruel.

So, what’s next? You didn’t give an explanation after all.”

You answered, “It’s complicated to make amends.

Then you changed the subject again with the way you pulled me closer while I brushed my teeth. I knew it. You just couldn’t answer me again.

Now things will never be the way they were before.

May you all find the one who notices the little details. The person who unconditionally embraces you. The person who will love you without making you change into someone you don’t want. The one.

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