The Things I Never Said Out Loud

There are entire conversations I’ve had with you in my head—lines I rehearsed, confessions I composed under the moonlight, truths that lived on the tip of my tongue but never found their voice. The things I never said out loud haunt me more than the things I did.

It started simple. A glance that lingered too long, a hesitation before goodbye. I thought you knew. I thought the silence between us was understood, filled with the weight of everything we didn’t say. But silence, I’ve come to learn, is a dangerous translator. It doesn’t always say what you want it to.

You were my friend. The kind of friend who made the world feel a little more tolerable, a little more alive. We shared playlists, movie nights, and midnight talks about everything and nothing. I told you about the time I got lost in a foreign city and how I found a bookstore that smelled like paper and home. You told me about your dad and the way you felt invisible in a room full of people. We connected in the quiet spaces, in the comfort of just being.

But under every laugh, beneath every casual touch, lived a growing ache I never named. I wanted to tell you how my heart raced every time you sat close. How I memorized your laugh like a song. How sometimes, when we talked, I wasn’t really listening—I was memorizing your voice for the days I feared would come.

I almost said it once. We were on your rooftop, wrapped in blankets, watching stars like they held answers. You looked at me and said, “You ever think there’s just one person out there you’re supposed to find?”

I nodded. My throat burned. “Yeah,” I whispered. “Sometimes I think I already did.”

You smiled. “Lucky them.”

I smiled back. But I didn’t say it.

I thought there would be time. Time to untangle the knots inside me, time to find the perfect moment, the perfect words. But time has a cruel way of running out when you need it most.

You met someone. You were glowing, and I was crumbling quietly. I watched you fall in love, and I hated how happy it made you. I hated myself for being the person who clapped the loudest while my heart shattered in silence.

So I wrote letters I never sent. I filled journals with the words I couldn’t say to your face. I imagined alternate versions of us—ones where I was brave, where I spoke, where you stayed.

The last time we talked, really talked, you told me you were moving. New city, new job, new life. I hugged you tightly, too tightly, and said, “I’m so proud of you.” You said, “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

And still, I said nothing.

It’s been months. You’ve built a life somewhere else, one I’m not a part of. I see glimpses on social media, your joy framed in pixels. I wonder if you ever think about me. If you remember the way we used to sit in silence and feel like that was enough.

Sometimes, I go back to that rooftop. In my mind, I finish the sentence. I say, “It’s you. You’re the person I’m supposed to find.” And in that version, you look at me differently. You reach for my hand. You stay.

But that version doesn’t exist. Only this one. The one where you never knew.

There is power in words, but also in the absence of them. I carried my truth like a fragile thing, afraid that saying it out loud would break the only connection we had. Now, I live with the ache of what could have been. Not regret, exactly—more like a soft, constant yearning.

I’ve started speaking more these days. Telling people how I feel before the moment slips away. I’ve learned that vulnerability is a kind of strength, and silence can be a prison of our own making.

But still, I carry you with me. In songs, in stories, in starlit skies. In the things I write but never send. In the things I never said out loud.