It’s a strange feeling missing someone.

I start to wonder if it’s them I’m missing or how I felt when I was with them—it’s an odd paradigm that has me overthinking and questioning my insecurities and debating whether or not to call. Would I be calling to speak to them? Or calling to appease my own sense of longing? I think it’s quite possibly a mixture of both.

At the end of the day the people we love, the ones we miss, the friendships we have, the experiences we’ve lived and the ones we crave are the catalysts for the unending range of emotions we have the capacity to feel. The emptiness, the fullness, the lowest lows and the highest highs.

I think I miss you.
I think I miss who I am when I’m with you.
I think I miss you as much as I miss myself.

It’s not that you “complete” me or make me feel whole, because anyone who knows me knows that I consider this idea fruitless and a product of watching The Notebook one too many times. We must be whole in ourselves before coming together with another. The missing is different to feeling incomplete. It’s difficult to describe and it appears differently depending on my mood, the time of the day and whether I’ve seen your most recent social media post.

Sometimes it feels like an elephant standing on my chest and other days it’s just a baby goat. Sometimes it’s butterflies exploring their full wing span in my rib cage and occasionally it’s a cat waking from an afternoon nap and stretching out in my stomach. It’s the inherent feeling of knowing you and realising that I actually don’t know you at all, we had only scratched the surface.

I often wonder if you’re wondering about me and then shake my head for entertaining such idle thoughts.

I hope your heart is happy. I hope you get to snooze on Sunday mornings and sleepily sip your percolated coffee. I hope you’re laughing and wearing your ugly shoes and not caring how other people see you.

I know I miss you.
I know I miss who I am when I’m with you.
I miss you.

I always was who I am and I always will be me—ever changing, growing, learning, and accepting myself. You helped me see how this multi-faceted, bright-eyed, magnetic person I saw looking back at me in the mirror was valuable. You made me feel important, and for that I will be forever grateful.

One day I would like to see you again and reminisce over breakfast and say thank you for seeing me for who I was. You could always see straight through me and as much as it rattled me, it calmed me too. There was no point pretending when I knew you wouldn’t buy it for a second. You are a catalyst. And my capacity to feel was only heightened by being with you.

I do miss you and I hope that sometimes you miss me too.

~

Author: Skye Hughes

Image: Flickr/Sam Churchill

Editor: Molly Murphy