180 Days With You

One hundred and eighty days with you. A title inspired by the famous film Five Hundred Days of Summer, but this one is heavier, more intimate, more real. It marks the closing chapter of this blog, and perhaps the closing chapter of something inside me. One hundred and eighty days because we are halfway through the year, and every time I try to measure what we are, I return to that New Year’s Eve. A night when I felt you were capable of not giving me importance. A night when I realized that the bond we were building could collapse simply because I cared too much for someone who did not care in the same way. But no one is born knowing how to navigate these things. We learn by breaking.

You gave signs. Small ones, subtle ones, the kind that only someone who pays attention would notice. And I noticed them all. I just chose not to confront them. I chose to stay. I chose to believe that presence could fix absence. Recently, I realized that mentally I am beginning to step back. I already like you in a way that feels unreal considering who you are and the emotional state you are in. I am fortunate to speak with you almost every day, but there is something you insist on ignoring that truly matters.

The bond we created is something fed mostly by me. Daily. Consistently. Quietly.

Every week you show me that you are capable of having an active life. You have routines, distractions, moments of leisure. You make me proud when you take care of yourself. But I never appear in the list of options for spending time with you. It simply does not happen. We have been together so many times, always well, always natural, and even then we fall into this sad dynamic where if I say nothing, you seem relieved. That is the feeling it gives. A dynamic you have said many times you never had before, yet you remain unable to give even the minimum in return.

Your justification is usually tied to the emotional blow you suffered, a relationship that never existed but still consumed almost two years of your life. I respected that. I always tried to show you that there is no shame in falling, in failing, in seeing the truth in the hardest way. What we do with what happens to us is what makes the difference. I see an incredible woman, someone people do not have the privilege of truly knowing.

It is a flaw of mine, but I feel things too intensely. And at this point, I know you are a mistake. Without being in love, I wait for you. I care about you in every moment. I want to know if you are well, who you are with, whether you need anything. You never need anything, and you never say anything, and that is also a reflection of how little you feel the need to reach out to me, even involuntarily.

In the middle of so many days and hours spent together, I miss your voice even on days when my social battery is low. I missed you when you were away, and every day I doubted that I would see you when you returned by your own initiative. I was right. Just like I did not see you before you left, because you did not want it enough. And in a relationship that is good, after six months, that is too revealing. It hurts, but there are things that hurt more.

I will never be the type to fake feelings or act differently to provoke a reaction. You always act the same way, almost at the edge of indifference. The emotional weight I carry for liking you so much is completely disproportionate to the importance I have in your life.

Rationally, my judgment does not allow me to trust you in many things. My subconscious tells me every day that I should walk away. It is a constant battle between wanting to see you and realizing that once again I am about to chase someone who stays in the comfort of her corner and simply says yes or no. A dynamic without change, even with the natural evolution between us.

Even with such a strong emotional chemistry, it is not enough. You justify your emotional absence with what you lived, and that is not fair. Not for me, not for you. It is something that hurt you deeply, but it is something you overcame, and without realizing it, you are letting it dictate how you act now. I want you to be well, and maybe maturity makes me look at you and, before desire takes over, I want to know if you are okay.

It is too much, without passion, but deep enough to know you are one of the people I care about the most. One of the people I love the most. And this is a letter you were never able to talk about face to face, mostly because you never felt the will to do so.

There is something else. No one introduces someone temporary to lifelong friends. No one brings someone casual into the circle of people who matter. You began to be part of my people and my family not because I imagined an altar, not because I was dreaming of a future carved in stone, but because it was the right thing to do. Because I believed in giving life to what we had. Because I thought about the love we never made, the desire you awaken but never show, and even then I chose to embrace the reality you brought. I wanted to give you more life. More dreams. Dreams that would all be fulfilled.

And here is the part you never understood. You were not just someone I liked. You were someone I defended. Someone I protected. Someone I placed in rooms where only people who matter enter. No one does that with someone temporary. No one does that without intention. You became part of my world because I believed you deserved it. And you never realized the weight of that. You never realized how much of myself I gave. You never realized how much more I could have given if you had simply met me halfway.

The days when I see you doing things with your people are days when I feel happy that you escape the toxic bubble you often feel trapped in. But they are also reminders that it was never me. That you never chose me. That you never even tried.

I write because in my mind you are losing your place every day. But in my heart it is impossible to imagine my life without you near. I know that if I do not let you go, I will lose myself. And that is the vision that tells me the end is always waiting.

I decided that I would trust your eyes and not the mouths of strangers. I decided that I would believe in what I saw in you, not in what others tried to paint. And even that, even that loyalty, even that clarity, was something you never managed to see.

I wanted to give you the love we never made, the desire you awaken but never show, the dreams I was ready to build with you because it felt and feels right to accomplish them with you. I wanted to give you more life. More dreams. All of them meant to be fulfilled.

And still, you never saw it. You never saw the weight of being chosen. You never saw the effort behind every gesture. You never saw how much I defended you, how much I protected you, how much I placed you in spaces reserved only for people who matter. You never saw how much more I could have given if you had simply met me halfway. That blindness, that inability to recognize what was in front of you, will be one of the nails in the coffin.

I decided to stand by you as a man. To wish you well. To be your friend. To be your companion. To trust your eyes. To ignore the noise of people who do not know you. I decided to believe in the version of you that only I had access to. And even that was not enough for you to understand the depth of what you were receiving.

You never realized that I was choosing you every day. You never realized that I was giving you a place in my life that no one receives lightly. You never realized that I was ready to do more, to give more, to be more. You never realized that I was building something real while you were still deciding whether you even wanted to show up.

And that is the part that hurts. Not the absence. Not the silence. Not the emotional distance. What hurts is knowing that even when I decided to stay, even when I decided to trust you, even when I decided to be present in a way no one else ever was, you still could not see it. You still could not value it. You still could not meet me in your tiny little world.

I wrote this because in my mind you lose your place a little more every day. But in my heart, it is almost impossible to imagine my life without you near. I know that if I do not let you go, I will lose myself. And that truth, that quiet truth, is the one that tells me the end has been waiting for a long time.

And we are reaching it, because of you. 

If tomorrow I leave, I won’t lose a damn thing, because the one in love never loses.

Igor