I Don’t Know What We Are
“a journal entry I wasn’t sure I’d ever share“.🫀
By Sisam
There’s a specific kind of ache that doesn’t have a clean name. It’s not heartbreak exactly — heartbreak implies an ending, something final and decided. This is different. This is the ache of something unfinished. Of a story that keeps pausing mid-sentence, never quite reaching a period, never quite becoming a question mark either. Just suspended. Just there.
That’s what you are to me. And I don’t know what to do with that.🌻
I’ve been sitting with this for a while now. Longer than I’d like to admit. I’ll be going about my day — making my morning tea, watching the light change through my window, folding laundry like a person who has it together — and then something small will remind me of you. A song. A phrase. The way the sky looks at that exact hour before it decides to be night. And suddenly I’m back there, in all of it, missing you in a way that feels almost embarrassing for how much space it takes up.
I don’t like to admit that. But this is my journal, and the whole point of a journal is honesty, so: I miss you. I miss you in the quiet, inconvenient, persistent way that doesn’t go away just because I want it to.
I miss the way we were.🫂
I miss our little stupid fights — the ones that meant nothing and somehow meant everything because at least we were in it together, caring enough to argue. I miss your long, nonsense talks, the ones that went nowhere and everywhere all at once, the kind where I’d roll my eyes but secretly never want you to stop. And most of all, I miss the way you loved me. Not perfectly. Not always gently. But fully. Like I was worth the effort of showing up for.
We’ve laughed together and cried together. We’ve dreamed out loud — a life far away from all of this, somewhere quieter, somewhere kinder, where we could start over and choose each other without the weight of everyone else’s opinions pressing down on us. Where we could just be. I still think about that place sometimes. That imaginary life. It felt so real when we talked about it.
And yes, we fought. We said things. I called you names I’m not proud of. I was sharp when I should have been soft, closed when I should have opened up. And still — still — you were there. Waiting. Like home waits. Like home always does, even when you’ve been gone too long, even when you’ve been difficult to love.
That’s the part that gets me. You felt like home. And then you felt like a stranger. And somehow, impossibly, you’ve been both at the same time.
I’ve been trying to take care of myself through this — whatever this is. I light candles and take long showers and write things down and call it healing. Some days it works. Some days the rituals feel like enough, like small acts of grace I’m extending to myself. I make playlists. I sit with my feelings instead of running from them. I let myself cry when the crying comes, because I’ve learned that’s not weakness — that’s just love with nowhere to go.
But I won’t pretend that’s the whole story. Because underneath all the soft self-care, underneath the journaling and the chamomile tea and the slow mornings, there’s still a part of me that hasn’t figured out how to let go of you. Or if I even want to.
Here’s the truth, as honestly as I can say it: I don’t know if we’re compatible. I don’t know if we can go back to the way we were, or if the way we were is even something worth going back to. I don’t know what we are — not friends, not strangers, not together, not fully apart. We exist in this strange in-between, and I have no map for it.
What I do know is that my heart aches for you. That it reaches for you in the quiet moments, without my permission. That missing someone this much, this softly, this stubbornly — it means something. I just haven’t decided what yet.
So this is me, sitting with the not-knowing. Not forcing an answer. Not making myself get over it on a timeline that looks good from the outside. Just being honest, here, in this little corner of the internet I’ve made my own, that some feelings don’t resolve neatly. Some people leave marks that take a long time to fade. And that’s okay.
Maybe we find our way back. Maybe we don’t. Maybe the kindest thing I can do — for myself, and for you — is to hold space for both possibilities without breaking apart in the waiting.
Until then, I’m here. Taking care of myself. Missing you a little. Living anyway.
And slowly, gently, learning that’s enough.🫧
thanks for reading something so close to my heart. if this resonated with you, you’re not alone. 🤍
🌿 come back whenever you need this — no cost, no catch. if you’d like a quiet letter from me sometimes, you can leave your email below. just soft words, when there are some to share.