LITERARY | You Were My Idea of Tomorrow

There are people you lose even when they were never really yours to lose.

I remember the time I wished, I hope I never lose you.

I did not know how prophetic that wish would become. I did not know that sometimes, you can lose someone without ever having the right to call them yours, that you can mourn a relationship that never learned how to become one, and that an almost can leave a wound deeper than something that had the certainty of a beginning and an ending.

Because how do you grieve something that never fully happened?

How do you mourn a future that was never promised, yet somehow lived so vividly inside your head?

I remember thinking that maybe, if I were brave enough, I would finally let myself reach for you instead of pretending I did not want to.

I'd love it if you held my hand.

I wanted to know what it would feel like to stop wondering. To let one moment become another. To find out whether the almost between us could finally become something real.

Maybe I should have kissed you anyway.

Maybe I should have ruined the friendship sooner.

Because there are regrets born from the things we did, and there are regrets born from everything we were too afraid to do.

Ours belongs to the latter.

And yet, even knowing that, I would still choose knowing you over never having known you at all.

That is the tragedy of it.

Maybe that is why some part of me never completely left.

I should have been over the butterflies by then.

I should have learned how to make your name ordinary.

I should have stopped remembering the smallest things about you, the things I never thought I would miss until they were no longer mine to experience.

And God, I am still into you.

That is the part I hate admitting.

I wanted to know what would happen if I stopped pretending I did not want you.

And if I could ask you only one thing, it would not be for another chance.

I would not ask you to return.

I would not ask you to choose me now.

I would only ask for the answer to the question I have carried for far too long:

Did you ever feel it too?

Did I ever matter to you in the way you mattered to me?

Was there ever a moment when you looked at us and wondered what we could become?

Was there ever a night when you thought about me after the conversation ended?

Was I ever more than an almost to you?

Because sometimes, I think that is all I wanted.

Maybe it was only a matter of timing. Cancer and Leo were never a love story waiting to happen, but an almost written so beautifully that it was difficult not to mistake it for fate.

e were close enough to make ordinary moments feel significant, close enough to make me believe there was a different ending waiting somewhere ahead of us.

There was something almost beautiful about not knowing.

Because when nothing had been said, everything was still possible.

There was still a version of the future where you and I could have become something more than two people who happened to find each other at the right time.

For a while, your presence felt like medicine, soothing parts of me I never knew how to reach, until I learned that even the gentlest remedy cannot make two people remain where they no longer belong.

But love is not always a cure.

Sometimes two people can be good for each other and still not become good together. Sometimes someone can make you feel safe without being the person who stays. Sometimes what once felt like medicine becomes something you have to learn to live without.

It'll never be the cure.

But gratitude is a strange thing when it is attached to someone you can no longer have. Because I can be grateful for what you gave me and still grieve what you could no longer give.

Tell me that I mattered.

Tell me that I was not imagining the feeling that lived between us. Tell me that somewhere in those conversations, those silences, those almost-moments, I was someone worth wanting.

That's all that I need to hear.

You were in my somedays.

In the plans we never finished making. In the places we never got to visit. In the quiet little life I imagined when I thought about what happiness might look like years from now.

I was always the midnight rain.

Always changing.

Always reaching for something beyond who I had been.

I was carrying the person you used to be while you were already becoming someone new.

I wish that sentence did not hurt as much as it does.

But it does.

Because I remember the things I once imagined.

The kind of future that does not sound extraordinary until you realize you will never have it with the person you imagined it with.

The tenderness I once thought belonged to our little world, now existing somewhere else, with someone else. And there are moments when I catch myself wondering whether she knows how lucky she is, whether she understands the softness in you that I once held so carefully.

Does she know the person I knew

Does she know the version of you who once made the world feel smaller simply by being there?

Does she know that there was a time when I could have written an entire future around you?

Maybe she does.

Maybe she knows you better than I ever did.

Maybe she is becoming familiar with the parts of you that I never got to meet.

Even if I loved the person you used to be.

Even if I still carry him with me.

Even if some quiet, unreasonable part of me still wonders what would have happened if we had been given more time, softer circumstances, better versions of ourselves.

I find myself thinking about all the things I once wanted for us.

And strangely, I still want them for you.

The little future that existed only because, for a while, we both believed it could.

I hope you get what you want.

I hope you become everything you are meant to be.

I hope the world is gentle with the heart I once knew.

And if someday you look back and wonder whether I ever truly loved you, I hope the answer reaches you somehow.

I did.

I loved you enough to imagine tomorrow with you.

And perhaps, even now, I love you enough to hope tomorrow is good to you without me in it.

Because once, when I was asked what I wanted, I knew exactly what to say.

It was you.

And if she is the person beside you when those dreams finally arrive, I hope you look at her and feel certain.

I hope she gets to know the best parts of you.

I hope she gets everything I once wished I could have.

Because once, when someone asked me what I wanted, the answer was embarrassingly simple.

You.

Just you.

Because somewhere inside me, there is still a version of the future where you never left. A version where the dreams stayed ours. A version where the person I loved became the person you remained.

It lets us love someone deeply enough to imagine an entire life, only to teach us that imagining a future with someone does not mean we are meant to live it with them.

And perhaps that is the quiet tragedy of us.

I was still carrying the future we once imagined.

You were already living beyond it.

Still, if someday you happen to look back, I hope you remember that before you became someone else’s present, you were once my idea of tomorrow.

And for a while, that was enough.

For a while, you were what I wanted.

I wanted you.

I loved you.

And for a little while, you were the future I knew by heart.

Because maybe that is what the almost did to us. It gave me enough of you to spend a long time yearning for the rest.

And maybe, somewhere inside me, it always will.