I didn’t notice how loud the metro was until I started taking it alone.
Now it screeches. The announcements echo too sharply. And no matter which corner I stand in, someone always bumps into me, making me nostalgic of the way I used to bump into him, just to annoy him a little.
All the more, it’s not like him and I had some big, dramatic breakup. There was no fight, no final slam of the door. Just… quiet. The kind that creeps in slowly and settles like dust. I think I saw it coming. I just didn’t want to believe it was real.
I used to think we’d find our way back like a habit, like gravity. But some goodbyes aren’t loud. Some just stay unfinished.
Now, I find myself chasing crowds just to feel a little less hollow. Lunch breaks, group projects, café hopping, I say yes to everything. I sit with people, laugh at jokes, nod through conversations.
But my mind? It’s still halfway somewhere else. With him.
I thought being lonely just meant being by yourself—but it’s more than that. But now I know, it’s about being without. Without that one person who felt like an involuntary breather.
Even when I’m surrounded by people, I still find myself looking around, half-hoping he’ll just appear out of nowhere and say something that only I’d understand. He’s just not there.
Still, he slips into everything. Conversations, songs, places. My friends don’t notice, but I do. Every line I speak carries a ghost of him- a tone, a word, a joke that used to be ours.
The bookstore at Select City Walk still feels like a quiet kind of home, maybe because we once stood there for an hour, reading in silence like the world outside didn’t exist..
The college canteen still has the table we used to claim. Sometimes I find myself lingering near cafés we never visited, imagining the memories we could’ve made.
Part of me still waits for him to turn around and understand that I was enough to stay for.
I don’t have a single memory of “me” without “him” in it. We weren’t just together – we were entwined.
Same class, same route, same hangouts. My routines still orbit him like muscle memory. It’s like I’m stuck in this version of myself that made sense only when he was part of the picture.
I thought I’d write this once I figured things out, once I had some clarity or healing or closure. But I haven’t.
I’m still in it. Still searching for pieces of him and calling it comfort. Still waking up hoping something will make this all make sense.
I try to be okay. Really, I do.
But most nights end the same with my phone in hand, his name typed out and then deleted. With a playlist that knows me too well. With sleep that doesn’t really come until the sky starts turning pale and soft and unbearably quiet.
This isn’t a story about letting go. It’s just a story about being in the middle of it of change, of ache, of still loving someone who now exists only in echoes.
