To the boy I never knew, but briefly adored

"To You. I hope this finds its way across the world to you when you start University this fall."

⭐︎. ⭐︎. ⭐︎. ⭐︎. ⭐︎. ⭐︎. ⭐︎. ⭐︎. ⭐︎. ⭐︎. ⭐︎. ⭐︎. ⭐︎. ⭐︎. ⭐︎. ⭐︎. ⭐︎. ⭐︎. ⭐︎. ⭐︎. ⭐︎. ⭐︎. ⭐︎. ⭐︎. ⭐︎

Dear "El",

I would like to address this message in a bottle to you personally.

Yes, I know that this is not your real name. Yes, you might not even know that this is about you. And yes, I know, you don't even read.

For someone who passed their English class using Sparknotes and Litcharts, may I politely remind you, that you were an absolute dick.

Excuse me for the language; that sounds like something You would say.

You.

The stranger who entered my life like a thorn pricking into a bubble.

Only you.

You, who popped out of nowhere three weeks ago in my snap. The calm before the storm, turning my blue skies gold. How was I to know it would turn out like this?

My friends all disapproved of my decision to continue down this road, and if I had known better, I would have ceased our interaction right then and there. But at the time, there was nothing for me to lose. I wanted something casual. I needed something casual. Perhaps, I was the one in the wrong to promote this behavior of yours, unlocking the vault into my life.

Here's something I never told you. I had recently gotten out of a 1-month relationship with my boyfriend, and let me tell you, I was darn happy. I loved him, not to the point where I would sacrifice the pinpoint of my existence for him, but enough to sit by him and hold his hand if he felt it was too much. Okay. You caught me. It was platonic love, it was friendship. Why I agreed to step into the relationship, I never understood. But I did know that I made the right decision when I stepped out of it.

Our relationship lacked what I craved in those rom-com, rose-colored movies, where a physical bond was just as important as a spiritual one. He was good to me, the best I've had in a while. Yet, he never made me want to upgrade our relationship to more than just spending a fruitful amount of time together.

And that's where you came in.

I was happy, but I was also unironically sad. I craved the intimacy of having a significant other, but I was afraid to devote myself to someone due to the inevitable risk of heartbreak.

It was a humid day for me here; I was having lunch. You suddenly popped into my "requested friends" on Snapchat, and I let you marinate for a couple of days before finally admitting you into my "friends" tab. You showed up the same day as another boy, let's call him Adrien, who immediately started snapping me first.

You, on the other hand, messaged me that night with a "Hey" and later asked me what I looked like. I was in my dad's car, driving home from school. I had just received an honors award at my school that day. My mind was preoccupied, but You, disrupted my everything.

You, whom I was once so cautious around (scared that you were secretly an elderly bald man named "Chuck" and lived in your mother's basement), and purposely giving you false information about myself (I am actually not American Filipino, my sincere apologies), soon led to something else. Our conversations, once casual jokes thrown around to avoid talking about what the other looked like, became a secret getaway for me to share my world with a stranger across the seas. My mother fancies conversing with strangers she has never met on her social media platforms, and I never understood the thrill of it until I started texting you.

You, who made me feel like I mattered. That I wasn't some random girl you happened to coincidentally pick up while cruising for strangers to add. You, who made me smile like a madman myself, as we texted for hours, opening up about our lives behind the phone. You told me about your life at your school, your interests, your favorite sport, your hobbies…Everything I needed to know to know you.

If you asked me to, I could make a list of everything I learned about you. You would think that I have known you my entire life.

I asked about you, you asked about me. We were simply two teenagers, wanting to be understood and seen by a stranger we had never met. I texted you with my heart on the line, terrified that one day, there will be nothing left for me to learn.

We bonded over movie critiquing, sharing our favorite lists of our most beloved films, and I still remember when you told me that you preferred the 1970 films better than the ones now. I wholeheartedly agreed with you. (because seriously, where are the creative original stories these days?)

You've never watched "The Perks of Being a Wallflower." I've never heard of "Sinners." We both adored "The Shawshank Redemption."

When you first asked me to watch The Conjuring with you, I initially refused. We had only been texting for a week, and while I was starting to get accustomed to the blue notifications signaling your presence, I was still skeptical of who you were.

Were you lying to my face? Did you mean everything you say?

Adrien had already unadded me after a week of snapping me, but surprisingly, you stayed.

Every time I clicked onto our chats, my heart pounded with the possibility that this could have been our last conversation. I had no faith in you. I forced myself to distance myself from the cruelest emotion of humanity: hope.

I didn't dare hope. I kept asking myself, When were you going to leave?

You didn't, though. You continued to stay.

You made me put too much faith in you. So, I dare say, this is all your fault. You started it.

Sometimes, I wonder if things could have been different if I had said yes to watching that movie with you. Maybe we would have been able to call and see each other's faces, before our texts slowly died out to single sentences, just like the way we started. Would you have agreed? Would you have kept your promise on facetiming me to watch that terrifying horror movie together?

I hate how I hold on to the potential of what could have been.

I was elated when I first discovered that yellow heart next to your icon on our chats. I was your #1 best friend, just the same as you were mine. Yet, instinctively, I was suddenly afraid of it running out.

Suddenly, that mundane yellow heart that I was so accustomed to seeing every day in the texts to my friends became that dangerous beacon of hope that I had with you.

This was not a situationship, although right now, it feels like one. This was not a situationship because you can't lose what you never had, especially not someone you've never met.

Can you?

We weren't anything special, despite the things that I was telling myself. I knew that I shouldn't be expecting more.

But god. I wanted more.

I knew that we would end up like this someday. You, leaving me behind in this spring field alone, with all the flowers that we nurtured together in the short time we had. They all bloomed too soon, too fast.

Then, they slowly started to wither.

The truth is staring me plain in the eye, and even now, I can't seem to accept it. Even now, as I write to you, I keep an eye on my phone, hoping you'll reach out to me again, even though I was the one who stopped replying…because there was no longer anything to reply to anymore.

Your answers were becoming dull. They no longer matched my tone of voice. You simply lost your interest, and I almost can't fathom how it's happening today.

What puzzles me is why you never leave the conversation first. You told me your favorite color, sent me pictures of that centipede-shaped scar on your ankles, showed me your artwork, and even told me how you weren't able to reply that one time when you hopped onto a plane… And yet, YOU were the one who stopped the enthusiasm and started giving short, clipped answers.

Were you bored? Is that what it is? Or was it out of respect?

You are not a bad person. I know that because you never leave me on read. You reply to everything I send, even though your reply now consists of three, and often one-worded answers. I almost want to laugh.

Look at me, still trying to defend the good in you when I never even truly knew you.

Why couldn't you end it first? Why couldn't you be the one to pull the plug permanently? Why ask for more when you planned to give less? Why reply so quickly with so few things to say? Why offer false future plans you never meant to keep?

I suppose I'll never know. I want to know. But perhaps, that's what people like you cannot seem to do: provide closure. I respected you, and I still do, but that doesn't mean I'm still fond of your presence.

You gave me enough attention for me to believe that I finally found someone who wanted me, was willing to listen to me, and gave me just enough mystery and thrill to keep the ride going. Perhaps, I did the same for you. Perhaps, you're talking to someone else right now. And although I initially felt a pinch to my heart when I first realized this, I have come to terms with the stupidity I carried with me into this "relationship."

I told all my close friends about you. Did you ever? I don't think you did. Prejudice aside, I romanticized the existence of you as a tangible rom-com character, ready to take me somewhere else. And you did. During that first week. Your false promises of meeting me in Europe for University, of wanting to teleport to me, of returning all my energy. I suppose those were all harmless words you believed would capture my attention towards you. You're not wrong. You did well. It worked, sadly.

However, I refuse to believe that you never felt the same. Even for one instance, I refuse to believe that you didn't feel that spark that occurred when we texted. It was always you who gushed over our similarities, our same birthday months, and our favourite foods. So, why did you leave when we had so much in common?

Of course, my letter is not one of remorse, it is not one of anger or yearning. I have moved on from that. I no longer feel my heart falling apart when you don't respond in a timely manner or match my enthusiasm to that same level anymore. I simply feel…disappointed. Bummed. Mad at myself for believing a boy who never showed up.

So, I would like you to know, "El," that you can continue adding random girls on snap. You can continue texting and adding to your glorious circle of post-graduation freedom. You can go ahead and continue filling that endless void that desires attention.

I know that you'll meet a girl at University, and I know that you'll do everything to charm her in your manner. And I know that she might just believe you, whoever you are, out there in the world.

You once told me that it didn't matter that I was a junior who was still in high school, because when the time came, you'd wait for me until I got to University. Well, fuck you. I bet you smiled when you lied.

I know you don't wait, because if you did, you would not have texted me in the first place. You would not have added me. Period. I don't know what I expected when I already saw the end to this relationship when we first started it.

I almost feel sorry for myself for believing you, but then again, I'm also not sorry, because you brought me a surprising amount of joy during my last weeks of school. I'm grateful to you for that. You never left me. You stayed by me. So, even in all my displeasure, I hope you continue to remember me, even if this was just a three-week rendezvous for both of us.

I broke my own heart because you were too polite to do it. Isn't that funny?

Goodbye then. Goodbye to you. Goodbye to the boy I never knew, but briefly adored, then loved, then became disappointed over.

Goodbye.

I hope you do well in life. I hope that in the unfortunate circumstance that we do meet in real life, you are not as big of an asshole as you are online.

Best regards,

The girl you texted for almost a month.