Not very many people know this but I’ve had a couple of almost relationships.
The first was very long drawn out. It lasted so many years and left me drained. The second healed me, and left me a better person than I was. The third I learnt and nipped it before anything happened.
I’m just a regular teenage girl, a hopeless romantic at heart. I seem to have everything under control but really deep down, I just want to have someone to call my own, to love and be loved.
Almost relationships are one of the hardest to get over, in my opinion. Nothing quite tangible came out of it, you guys never made it to the stage where you could label yourselves, but the feelings were just as real as those in any relationship. The love, the time, the effort you put in, the sadness and the heartbreak when you need to accept its end. It is not difficult to find resources that help you through breakups from actual relationships. Articles, songs, quotes, etc. But when you are trying to get over an almost relationship, almost nothing is available.
This is one of the reasons why I started writing. I couldn’t find resources to help me through what I was feeling, so I decided to create my own. This was something I didn’t want to burden my friends with too often (though they really helped me to figure out a lot of what I was feeling), but I couldn’t talk to my family about it (I didn’t tell them the whole story).
One thing I did realise was that Thought Catalog had a good number of articles I related to, which really helped me through my feelings. Most of the time, they described my feelings better than I could, so please check them out if you need resources like those.
But here, in this post, I just wanna share my own experience and address this issue. It’s also an open letter to these people in my life, as a form of closure.
In my address to 第一个你
Every single day, I toy with the idea of arranging a meetup so we can talk things through. I still don’t understand why you lied. I don’t understand why you led me on. I don’t understand what happened between us.
We started of as great friends. I know I probably hurt you when I broke things off the first time but I hoped you understood that I wasn’t ready. I grew up sheltered and everything you said was something new to me. It was something I thought I was ready for but I clearly was not.
When the friendship resumed, I thought we were in a good place but clearly it was just a facade. Friends don’t lead each other on the way you did me.
In all honesty, just like what I told you on day 1, texts are not a form of distraction. If i’m busy I just won’t reply until I’m free. Your educational path does not bother me. When that is the topic of conversation, I’m only trying to understand what your system is like or trying to share resources with you, like I do to all my other friends. Just so you know, I have other friends in ITE and we get along perfectly fine, I really don’t know why it bothers you so much. My feelings were real. I saw potential for a future but I guess things just don’t go as planned.
As a friend though, I still hope that you still do well and are happy in life. Perhaps she will be a better friend to you than I was. I just can’t be friends with someone who lied and hurt me intentionally like that.
You didn’t actually have to avoid me though. Creating a new instagram account and hiding that was not necessary. I’ve said that I can disappear and I can do that. Our conversations can easily be limited to ‘Hi’ and ‘Bye’. I can pretend not to know you. I can pretend that seeing you and your brothers hang out with her doesn’t sting so damn much, until it really doesn’t.
I’m over you. I really am. I’m done with whatever this was and I know that I deserve more than this. Thank you for the amazing memories and thank you for teaching me so much, lessons that were important, albeit a little painful.
To 第二个你
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. Your appearance in my life was one of the best things that happened to me. You appeared when I was at my weakest and even though you didn’t know it then, you helped me to get back up. I found my drive again because you gave me something to work for.
Even more importantly, I’m really glad that our friendship survived me dropping the bomb. That didn’t happen the first time and I was so afraid of losing a mentor because I was chasing honesty.
I think one of the things I appreciated the most was knowing right from the start that you were a taken man. I can’t always control my heart but I can control my brain, which made this whole entire episode so much easier to handle.
Thank you for helping me through that period of my life and I hope we always stay good friends/mentor-mentee.
To 第三个你
Heh, I really don’t have much to say to you haha, only because the whole thing blew over so quickly since you were honest with me.
After number 1, I realised that one of the things I appreciated the most was honesty.
All in all, you felt like a test for me to see if I really learnt my lesson, whether I was able to stop everything before anything developed on my end. And I’m pretty happy to say that I did learn my lesson.
There’s so much I can learn from you, skills wise so I really hope we continue to stay good pals. Thanks for being so easy to talk to! You’re seriously one of the coolest dudes I know:)
Almost relationships are just as legit as actual relationships. Sometimes they’re even harder to talk about because nothing actually happened, but so much happened.
The whole point in me writing this (besides the fact that I want to remember these things even when I’m old and grey) is that I want to acknowledge any one of you who may be going through this. It may seem bleak but you CAN heal, you CAN walk out of this unpleasant situation, and there WILL be someone out there who is right for you, you just haven’t met him/her yet.
If you wish too, you can always contact me on my contact page via email or through my DM on Insta (@01step_at_a_time) to talk, to rant, to vent. I’m here for you guys, always have, always will.
If you would like to, you may also want to check out @giving.soulfood. It’s a page dedicated to quotes and mental wellness. It may or may not work for you but quotes were a huge part of my recovery process.
This has been a long and rather emotional post, but I really hope that it helps some of you, even if it’s the tiniest bit.
Till the next post, safe safe, hygienic and happy!
One Step At A Time 