The First Cold Night

Tonight felt different. It wasn't winter yet. Not really.

But there was a little cold in the air for the first time—the kind that makes you pull your sleeves over your hands and stay outside for a few minutes longer than you planned.

And strangely, the cold made me think of you.

Maybe because some nights don't remind you of a particular memory.

They remind you of a particular feeling.

I stood there for a while, feeling the cold against my skin, looking at the quiet night, and wondered what you might be doing.

Maybe you're somewhere warm.

Maybe you're looking out of a window too.

Maybe you're laughing with someone, completely unaware that somewhere far away, someone thought of you because the weather changed.

Funny how people can become connected to things they never asked to be connected to.

A song, A place,  A particular hour of the night.

And apparently, now... the first cold night of the year.

I don't know why I wanted to tell you this. Maybe I didn't even want to tell you. Maybe I just wanted to write it somewhere. Because there are some thoughts that don't need a destination.

They just need somewhere to exist.

And tonight, while the world slowly became colder, I found myself remembering how warm certain moments once felt.

Not painfully, Just quietly.

The kind of missing that doesn't ask you to come back.

It only reminds you that, once upon a time, someone mattered enough to become part of the way you experience ordinary things.

So if you happen to feel a little different tonight... if the cold somehow feels more familiar than it should... may be it's nothing.

Or maybe, 

somewhere, someone is remembering you too.

And for tonight, that's enough.

The Way I Still Look at You

In the most selfish corner of my heart, I still wish no one ever looks at you the way I do.

I know how that sounds.

A little selfish.

A little impossible.

Maybe even a little unfair.

But I'm not talking about ownership.

I'm talking about that strange kind of love where you don't just see someone - you notice them.

The little changes in their voice.

The way they laugh when something genuinely catches them off guard.

The expressions they make without realizing it.

The things they say casually that somehow stay with you for years.

I remember looking at you and thinking there was something about you that the rest of the world might never completely understand.

And maybe that's what I miss.

Not just having you.

But having a way of looking at you that felt like it belonged only to me.

Life moves forward, of course.

You meet people.

You grow.

You change.

You learn to live with the spaces where certain people used to be.

And I genuinely hope someone loves you well.

I hope someone makes you laugh until your stomach hurts.

I hope someone notices when you're pretending to be okay.

I hope someone gives you the kind of care you always deserved.

But somewhere, deep inside me, there will probably always be that tiny, unreasonable thought:

I hope nobody ever sees you exactly the way I did.

Because they might love you.

They might adore you.

They might even know you better than I ever did.

But they won't have my memories.

They won't know what it felt like to discover you for the first time.

They won't know the version of you I carried in my heart.

And perhaps that's the one thing time can't take away from me.

You can become someone else's present.

You can become a beautiful part of someone else's life.

But you'll always remain a small, irreplaceable chapter of mine.

And in the most selfish corner of my heart…

I'll probably always be a little protective of the way I remember you.

I'd carry the weight of missing you

I am not afraid of healing. I am afraid that healing means erasing you. I'd carry the weight of missing you than live like you never mattered.

Maybe that’s the part people don’t understand.

They tell you that healing means letting go.

Moving on.

Leaving the past where it belongs.

And maybe they’re right in some ways.

But I never understood why healing has to mean pretending.

Pretending I didn’t care.

Pretending you weren’t important.

Pretending those moments meant nothing just because they didn’t last forever.

I don’t want to do that.

I don’t want to wake up one morning and realize that I’ve become so good at moving on that I can no longer remember what it felt like to love you.

Because whatever happened between us, whatever changed, whatever distance came between us…

You mattered.

And I don't want healing to rewrite that truth.

I want to heal from the pain, not from the memories.

There’s a difference.

I want to reach a place where thinking about you doesn’t break something inside me.

Where I can remember your voice without wondering why I can’t hear it anymore.

Where a familiar song can remind me of you without ruining my entire day.

Where I can smile at the memories instead of desperately trying to bury them.

Maybe that is what healing actually looks like.

Not forgetting.

Not erasing.

Just learning how to carry something precious without allowing its absence to destroy you.

Because some people leave your life but don't leave your story.

They become a chapter you don't read every day anymore, but you never tear the pages out.

And maybe you'll always be somewhere in mine.

Not as a wound.

Not as a regret.

Not as someone I am waiting helplessly for.

Just as someone who once made my world feel different.

Someone who made me dream a little bigger.

Someone whose presence changed something in me that cannot simply be undone by time.

And if one day I stop missing you the way I miss you now, I hope I don't mistake that peace for forgetting.

I hope I understand that the love was real even after the longing became quiet.

Because I don't need to keep hurting to prove that you mattered.

And I don't need to forget you to prove that I've healed.

Maybe someday I'll think of you and feel nothing heavy at all.

Just warmth.

A small smile.

A quiet I’m glad I got to know you.

And maybe that will be enough.

Until then, I'll keep learning how to live with the distance between what was and what is.

I'll keep becoming someone I'm proud of.

I'll keep walking forward.

But I won't erase the footprints behind me just because I'm no longer walking in that direction.

Some people are not meant to be forgotten.

They're meant to be remembered differently.

And if healing eventually means I can remember you without needing you…

then maybe that isn't erasing you after all.

Maybe that's the gentlest way of keeping you.