3,652 days

“Lola, how are you?”

I didn’t answer right away.

I looked at the message and felt my stomach twist in that familiar way — the way it always did when his name appeared on my screen after silence. It had been years. Too many. Not enough.

The truth was… I wasn’t sure how I was.

Because how do you explain that you’re being haunted by someone who was never really there?

Do you remember when we were kids?

We’d lay in the grass, looking up at the clouds, guessing their shapes. We’d spin in circles and fall down, laughing as the world kept spinning without us.

When he was gone, I’d lay in bed and stare out the window just like that.

But it didn’t feel like childhood. It didn’t feel like spinning.

It felt like drowning in still water.

Instead of imagining bunnies or dragons in the clouds, I imagined him.

The man I loved. The man who made me feel seen, wanted, chosen.

I replayed everything. Start to finish. Like a movie I’d seen a hundred times but couldn’t stop watching.

Where did it go wrong?

Was it ever real?

Why didn’t I see the signs?

How could I be so stupid?

Was I so desperate to feel loved that I ignored every crack in the foundation?

Hindsight is cruel.

You look back and see it all. The red flags. The way he disappeared when I needed him. The words he twisted. The lies he dressed in charm.

But in the moment?

You don’t see when the first crack forms.

You only feel the collapse after it’s too late to brace for impact.

Who was he?

The version of him I fell in love with — where did he go?

Was he ever even there?

I missed that man.

The one who gave me butterflies. Who called me Lola and made it feel like a nickname only soulmates used.

The one who said I was the first person who ever really understood him.

I fought for that man.

I bled for that man.

I died a thousand slow deaths trying to keep that man alive.

And when he vanished — again, like he always did —

I didn’t grieve like you would for someone who died.

I grieved like someone who was never truly alive.

Because how do you mourn something that was never real?

How do you say goodbye to a dream that never had a body?

I thought closure would come from a conversation.

A final apology.

An explanation.

But the thing about illusions is… they don’t owe you anything.

They just disappear when the spotlight fades.

But that man never existed.

He was an illusion. A well-built lie. A carefully rehearsed role.

And I was just the girl in the front row, clapping at the end of every act — unaware it was all just a show.

The shame I felt when the curtain dropped…

When I saw the man behind the mask — cold, indifferent, dangerous — not the man I loved, but the one who’d always been there.

One punch. That’s all it took.

The illusion shattered.

The fantasy dissolved.

The story ended.

And I still looked for him.

For years, I looked for him.

Five years of chasing a ghost.

A ghost that never existed.

Every time I thought I was free, he found a way to pull me back in.

Guerrilla warfare — that was his specialty.

He didn’t charge in with full force.

He waited.

Struck from the shadows.

Attacked my peace in small, cutting ways.

“Hey.”

“I miss you.”

“I’ve changed.”

“You’re still the one.”

Love bombing was his ammo.

And I was his battlefield.

I used to think healing would feel like freedom.

But for a while, it just felt like emptiness.

No more highs. No more chaos. No more begging the universe to make him show up and prove me right.

Just silence.

And slowly, beneath the silence —

Clarity.

Not the kind that comforts.

The kind that cuts.

Because once I saw it for what it was — really saw it —

I couldn’t unsee it.

Couldn’t keep pretending I’d lost something valuable.

I hadn’t lost a great love.

I had survived a performance.

He’s still haunting me.

3,652 days.

How many more until the echoes are gone?

I keep moving. Pretending I don’t hear them. When they are almost forgotten. He shows up again.

“Hey just checking in.”

How does he know? How does he know he’s almost been forgotten. Like a tiny alarm signaling to him in some secret passage way in my mind.

I fell in love with an illusion.

And I’m haunted by the man who created it.

He never exhisted. He was never real.

I loved the dream.

Now I run from the nightmare.