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like my love life

A/N: I wasn’t sure if I should post this, because it kinda makes me look like a shitty person who can’t accept a rejection. But keep in mind while reading this that these are fresh feelings from when I just got rejected, and just before valentines day. So I wasn’t exactly thinking logically.

i miss you. god, i didn’t even last a couple days without writing about you! i wish i could unlove you because it’s starting to really hurt. no, that’s a lie. if i wanted to, i would. i signed up for this when i fell in love with you. to sign up for love is to sign up for pain. i know what i signed up for and i would do it again, and again, and again. because loving you is the greatest thing that ever happened to me.

i stopped using chatgpt for you. okay well, technically i stopped using chatgpt for anything not related to my degree for you because my degree is computer science and it literally requires me to use it as a part of my curriculum. and that’s only one of the many ways you have made me a better person. okay maybe not that much better because i currently have a very smug smile on my face because if you’re reading this right now i already know that “i stopped using chatgpt for you,” has got to be one of the most romantic things you’ve ever heard.

i know i told you i was over it, but i realised i was not when you told me you were switching colleges and leaving the city. i felt it when i thought it was too late, and by god, i was so relieved when i heard it wasn’t. no literally, i heard channa mereya playing in my head as i watched you leave.

i wanted to tell you on valentines day. that i had fallen completely and irrevocably and unapologetically in love with you and i wouldn’t change that even if you didn’t feel the same way. i had a valentines gift in mind too. a handmade crochet rose. because the last rose i gave you wilted before i could even get to you, and you deserve a flower that will last forever. i was going to give it to you after the event that i bailed on last minute because i was too heartbroken to see you. i kind of regret that because the eight hour cryptography lecture i had to attend instead was definitely not worth it. i really want to see you but i don’t think i’d ever get over you if i did, because while you’re not around, i might convince myself you’re not as great i made you up in my head. it will take only seeing you once to remember that you are. because distance makes the heart grow fonder but proximity makes the heart want to leap out of my chest and make its way to you.

you told me once that you didn’t need to be attracted to somebody to be with them casually, and immediately i wanted in on that. it didn’t have to mean anything to you, but to simply hold you in my arms and kiss you once would’ve been the greatest moment of my life. you turned me down because you didn’t think i could handle casual, and much as i hate to say it, you were right. because i am a greedy, greedy person, and once would not have been enough for me.

i feel in binary. 1 or 0. i love you, or i don’t. i cannot fathom the in-between state of ‘casual’ that i so desperately wish to have with you, if that is all i can ever have. and yet, you will find me begging, begging, begging on my knees to be the casualty of the only kind of love you claim you can offer. i believe you are capable of more, but perhaps not with me.

sometimes i believe you’d love me if i were a man. what has the one man you compare to an angel done that i haven’t? it’s certainly not his looks, because i’ve seen your previous boyfriends— they absolutely do not hold up in that department. i suppose his kindness was a factor, and his love; but wasn’t that what ultimately separated you too? why him but not me? i will never know. all i know is: he may regret that he lost you because he fell too hard, but i will always envy him because briefly, even for a fleeting moment, he could have you.

of course, i was wrong about that too. because you do love a woman. it hurts more than the others, because with them, you never called it love. and why? because she slow-danced with you? if you told me that was all it would take, i’d have done it first! but somehow, i know deep down it wouldn’t have worked. not just because i’d be a terrible slow-dancer, but because every time i reach out to pluck a rose, i prick myself on its thorns. i pluck it anyway. i admire it anyway, because everything good always comes with a tradeoff, and if the thorns are a part of the rose, i will learn to love the thorns equally. what i did not realise was that perhaps the rose pricked me because it didn’t want to be plucked by me. and the only thing i can do is respect that. it doesn’t stop me from being jealous of the woman that could pluck it without getting pricked. i sincerely hope i don’t mean to go all olivia rodrigo over this— i do want you to be happy with her, but selfishly, i want you to wonder if you’d be happier with me.

i don’t know if this is weird, but i’ve imagined marrying you. and why shouldn’t i? if i like it i’m gonna put a goddamn ring on it, i stand with Queen Bey on this. but only if you want the ring. in this universe, we live in a barbie dreamhouse-like home that you designed entirely, with my only input being “barbie dreamhouse”, “chettinad style, but without the sunlight opening”, and “whimsy”. we have separate rooms, because we both have times when we want to crash out alone. i put up your paintings all over the house because i love looking at them and i want to look at them all the time. i have a pencil-sketch of you in my purse that i drew absentmindedly while staring at you on a random day. you discover it on a random day and laugh. we have breakfast and dinner together everyday, come hell or high-water, because i insist on making sure you’ve eaten at least two healthy meals. i make yours jain-friendly, and add the garlic later because i cannot survive without garlic. i have a rule against smoking inside the house and you don’t break it. we talk about books and politics and gender roles and injustice over coffee in the morning, send each other flirty reels during the day when we’re apart, and come home to rant. i end every phone call with “love you” and pout when i don’t hear “love you too” before the call ends. you come home excitedly one evening with a new sally rooney book in your hand from crossword. it was an impulse buy, that you could have gotten for far cheaper on amazon, but i can’t bring myself to chastise you for it because i did exactly the same thing with suzanne collins— and it was a hardcover. you tell me exactly how the book changed your life and will not stop talking about it for a couple days, and for those few days i forget that i cannot stand sally rooney’s writing for the lack of quotation marks simply because hearing you talk about anything makes it instantly more beautiful.

while i want this fictional universe to materialise in reality, i’m not too stupid to know it can never be. this isn’t some ‘beauty and the beast’ scenario where you’d fall for me if i gave you a library and slow-danced with you there. you’re not princess belle and i’m not a beast who needs you to save me. so i will let the last petal fall from the rose in the west wing, because i would rather have you in my life as a friend than not at all.

A/N: Just to reiterate, I bear no ill feelings towards the woman I wrote this about. Some of this only sounds petty because I wrote this right after finding out she’s in love with another woman, and it was an avalanche of feelings from there, not all of which were logically sound. We are still friends and I intend for us to remain so.