We don’t talk anymore
How I hate that we ever stopped
We don’t talk anymore
It’s only me that you’ve dropped
We don’t talk anymore–like we used to do
Both of our lives have been cropped–I am this decade’s biggest fool
(I suck at poetry and the rhymes that I came up with in the shower, which weren’t absolute garbage, left my memory during Isha prayer.)
I wasn’t expecting to write this. In fact, the title of this post is directed at another girl, met more recently and friendzoned more freshly-still, and yet I’m writing about someone from over 4 years ago. Here I am, nearly three hours into the 7th day of 2024, writing about someone I’m not hung up on, solely because I saw her at a party the prior calendar day.
I also saw her last summer in another state at a relative’s wedding. We didn’t speak then. Neither did we speak today (err, yesterday). Last year I had a full conversation with one of her relatives, who was stood next to her seat, and neither of us acknowledged the other. Today she was at the drinks station as I went to grab a water bottle, and remembering last year’s happenstance I quickly turned on my heel and walked away so as not to catalyze confrontation.
This awkward situation is wholly my doing. I made things weird. Rule number fucking one of amicably-ended-talking-stages is don’t. make. it. weird. I did that, twice, and she had the grace to forgive it the first time. The second time was a lot more unintentional, but still tomfoolery, buffoonery, even social retardation on my part.
At least we don’t run into this situation often. I’ll see her at a social event once or maybe twice a year. I converse with that same relative every so often, discussing our shared hobbies. I still hate that I put us in this situation (or maybe it’s just me in this situation, and she thinks naught of me, which is great if true). I have mostly gotten over my regrets for fumbling that bag (as the kids say), but God is the better planner than me and I trust Him more than I trust myself. It just sucks that someone who I used to be friends with (even after I stopped “talking” to her) and someone I trust[ed] and enjoy[ed] conversing with is now no longer on speaking terms with me. And it’s doubly–perhaps triply–more unfortunate that this circumstance is wholly and squarely my doing and, as I understand it, both unfixable and unneeding of correction.
We run in different circles. We don’t share friends. We live on opposite sides of the city. We’re on different career paths. Even if my friendship with her relative increases or grows stronger, I’m not such a weirdo that I would force myself back into her life. I doubt it will, by the way, and I’m not making much effort to make it such because we have a cool, casual, but good thing going and I don’t see the need to pledge fealty to that person or to secure that person’s fealty for myself. Not every social interaction or societal tie is a matter of life and death, of love or hate, of this or that. It can just “be” and that is enough.
I feel these emotions, of regret and cringe and a twinge of anxiety, every time I see her across a party hall or living room. These instances are so few and far in between, and yet because I’ve labeled her “the one that got away,” they always elicit disconcerting manifestations. This time the cup runneth over and I had to write it out.
I don’t remember if I told her about this blog. I doubt she has a WordPress account by which she followed this blog nor do I think she subscribed via email. Neither am I going to link this post to my social media accounts (which we still have each other added on, for some not-quite-odd-but-not-quite-right reason) nor am I going to make it known to her by other means (we still have each other’s numbers and are in a group chat together?). But, if perchance, she reads this…
I’m sorry, yaar. Genuinely. I know that means jack shit and I don’t say it out of an ulterior motive to regain your friendship or mend the unmendable or whatever. I just feel bad about the way things transpired and recognize that you’re pretty much blameless in that chain of events. I hope you know that I never initiate salam or any conversation, in those few-and-far-in-between moments that we share air conditioning, out of respect for your wishes to cease association. I hope I’m not doing a disservice to your wishes by doing that. I hope one day, when we’re older and the bullshit of our early 20s is behind us, that we can enjoy chai-shai and gupshup with each other like the well-adjusted, happily married [to other people] adults that we will become. I hope you forgive me before I die. I hope you excuse me when I actually reach out to you for your forgiveness before my next pilgrimage, if God and His Messenger invite me back to al-Haramayn al-Shareefayn.
And God knows best.
Ruminations of a Brown Redneck 