Seven Years of You

I bought that silly hibiscus tea you used to make fun of. Said it tasted like a flower’s funeral. And yet, there I was, seven years later, standing in the aisle with the box in my hand, grinning like a fool, wondering if you’d roll your eyes at me again.

That’s when I realized:

I still do things for you.

I don’t miss you in the obvious ways. I don’t cry. I don’t keep your pictures. I don’t text when I’m drunk (I haven’t had your number in years). But it’s like you left a ghost-version of yourself stitched into the lining of my brain — and that ghost is... active. Alive, even.

You’re not here. But your preferences are. Your raised eyebrows are. Your taste in music. Your taste in me.

There’s a theory in psychology — maybe Jung, maybe someone else trying to sell a book — that every person we form deep attachment to builds a sort of archetype inside us. A psychic blueprint. It’s not them anymore, not really. Just the version we absorbed. A character we write without noticing.

You’ve become that for me.

A shadow-director in the theater of my everyday.

Back then, you had this remarkable ability to make me feel like a better version of myself — which, now that I’m older, I realize is a dangerous thing to outsource. That feeling is addictive: Wow, I like myself more when you like me.

God help anyone who builds a house on that kind of foundation.

The break was ugly in the way that quiet endings often are. No explosion. No betrayal. Just decay. Days that got heavier. Conversations that felt like running through mud. You left like you never really arrived.

But what you left behind was a kind of blueprint. Or a landmine, depending on the day.

It’s not dramatic. I function. I’ve dated people since. I’ve even loved. But when I put on a certain shirt, or play a certain band, or choose a clever phrase in a text message — there you are. Hovering in my internal editor’s booth, giving a nod of approval I never asked for. Or worse, a disapproving silence I still hear.

It’s humiliating, in a low-grade tragic kind of way.

Like a man still adjusting his tie for a job he was fired from years ago.

Some entities haunt rooms and houses. You? You haunt decision-making-- or something.

There’s a version of me you liked — or at least, you seemed to.

And sometimes, without thinking, I try to become that version again.

Still auditioning for a ghost.

Sometimes I wonder if I ever truly loved you… or if I just loved who I thought you wanted me to be.

That's the trick with memory: it smooths the rough edges, romanticizes the trauma, turns old wounds into poetry. But it never lies entirely. There’s a reason you're still here. It’s not because I haven’t moved on — it’s because I took pieces of you with me when I did.

They say we’re just collages of everyone we’ve ever loved. I think that’s true. But you’re not just a square in the collage. You’re the glue.

You taught me how to say "I see" instead of "you're wrong."

You made me weirdly obsessed with hand-rolled cigarettes, even though I never smoked.

You introduced me to that stupid Russian short story about the man who fell in love with a cloud.

I hate that I still think of you when it rains sideways.

I once tried explaining this to someone I dated — that feeling of being haunted by someone who’s alive and probably thriving, that itch you can't reach. I told her, “You ever love someone so hard they built a second home in your subconscious?” She blinked twice and asked if I’d ever been to therapy.

Fair.

But the truth is: I’ve loved again. I’ve even healed — or thought I had, until I caught myself scanning a new partner for your mannerisms like a sniffer dog for contraband.

Would you have found this person smart? Would you have found this moment charming? Would you be proud of me for how I argued back, calmly this time?

It’s sad. Maybe. But it’s also very human.

The older I get, the more generous I become about it.

Yes, you hurt me.

Yes, you warped me.

But you also saw something in me before I did — and then left before I could believe it myself. So I’ve spent the last seven years trying to live up to your imaginary version of me. Trying to finish the story you left mid-sentence.

And maybe that’s not the worst thing.

Because in some twisted way, you made me pay more attention to who I am.

You taught me to sharpen my tongue, but soften my delivery.

To notice what people laugh at — and what they don’t.

To care about details I used to brush past.

To mourn in private and sparkle in public.

I don’t hate you anymore.

I don’t even want you back.

But you should know… the ghost of you is still on the payroll. Quiet, mostly. But every now and then, you wake up and offer unsolicited feedback. On my clothes. On my writing. On the people I love.

And I still listen. Sometimes.

Not because I need your approval.

But because you were a chapter in my becoming.

Not the whole book — just the page I folded in half, so I could find my way back to it.

Seven years, and I still catch myself smiling at mirrors — wondering if you’d have smiled back.