Loving in Silence: A Decade of Holding On to Someone Who Never Stayed

Today is your birthday, and even though we were never truly together in the way most people imagine love, you’ve been the center of my world for almost nine years. We only met once—just one lunch, one simple meeting—but to me, it felt like a lifetime of feelings packed into a single moment. We never held hands, never sat side by side as lovers do, but I loved you more than I’ve ever loved anyone. You were in my thoughts every day. I built dreams around you, imagined a future with you, gave you my loyalty, my emotions, and a kind of love that asked for nothing in return but honesty. Yet, what I got was silence, lies, and moments where you came close only to disappear again. For almost six years, I’ve been living with the pain of your distance, trying to move on, failing every time. 

You made promises you never kept, you gave me hope only to take it away, and still, I kept believing in you. Your unloyalty didn’t come in loud ways—it came in quiet, cold absences, in long silences, in sudden disappearances, in loving someone else while I was still here, waiting. I never touched your hand, but I held on to your memory like it was my oxygen. Now I suffer in silence, dealing with anxiety, depression, and a deep sadness that no one sees. And even though you broke me in ways you may never understand, a part of me still aches for you, still wonders if you ever truly cared. So today, with a heart full of pain and a mind full of memories that never became real, I say—Happy Birthday. Not because you earned it, but because loving you, even from a distance, was the only thing that ever felt real to me.