I still talk to you.
But not like before. Not in texts or calls or voice notes. Not even in whispers. Just.... in my head.
You'd probably laugh at that. Call it dramatic. Or nonsense. Maybe even cute, in that way you used to make fun of me for being "too soft sometimes". For being "too easy." But it's true. You're still here, in the weirdest, maybe in my own loneliest ways.
Most days, I carry full conversations with you in silence. Inside my head. I'll see something stupid on my feed, and the first instinct? "She'd roll her eyes at this." I even imagine what you'd say. Sometimes I say it out loud. Just your voice in my head, sharp and sarcastic or soft and warm — depending on the version of you that shows up. Although I'm forgetting it a bit more everyday.
And I've started replying for you, too.
"Look at this mess," I'll think, scrolling through the videos or walking into my room, and I'll imagine you saying something like, "You really need to clean your shit up!"
And I'll laugh. Alone.
It's like you live in the pauses between my thoughts.
I don't know when this started— maybe around the same time the silence got unbearable. When it hurt too much to admit you weren't coming back, and talking to you in my head felt like a loophole. A way to cheat the goodbye I never got. A way to stay sane in this cursed world.
But here's the thing no one tells you— grief doesn't just hurt because someone is gone. It hurts because the version of them that stays inside you keeps growing. Evolving. Talking back. And you don't even know if it's really them anymore, or just your own voice pretending.
You still laugh at my dumb jokes, in my head of course. You still scold me when I skip meals. You still ask, "Did you sleep?" even when I don't want to answer.
I imagine you sending me a reel, or a meme or something.... Anything.... Just the way you used to. And I imagine what I'd send back. Replies. Sometimes, I even scroll through the For You page and pause, thinking— she'd love this one.
Then I forget.
Then I remember again.
That you're not here.
You're not laughing. You're not checking in. You're not missing me.
Nothing. Not anymore.
It's just me.
Talking to you. Inside my head. Every time.
And I know how that sounds. I know it's not healthy. Makes me look as if I'm losing my mind every day, slowly.
But it's either this or forgetting, and between the two, I think I'd rather lose a little grip on reality than let go of what's left of you in me.
Because letting go means the conversations stop. It means I don't hear your laugh in my head when something funny happens. It means I stopped wondering what you'd say if I sent you a picture of the sky today.
And I don't want that. Not yet. Not ever.
Sometimes I imagine what you'd say if you saw me now. How quiet I've gotten. How much I keep to myself these days. How the looks of my eyes changed.
Would you notice? Even a tiniest bit? Would you say, "Hey, you okay? Everything alright?".
I think about that a lot.
Because even when I pretend it doesn't matter anymore, some part of me still aches for someone to ask.
You were that someone.
And maybe it's pathetic, but I still rehearse how I'd answer, if you did.
I think the hardest part isn't that you're gone— It's that I still haven't figured out how to stop talking to you. Or remembering you.
How to unlearn your voice.
How to fill in the pauses you used to occupy.
So I don't.
I just… keep talking.
Keep laughing with you.
Keep telling you about my day.
About what pissed me off.
About the stupid thing I watched last night.
About how my tea tasted.
Even though I know you'll never reply.
Maybe I'm not ready for silence yet. And I'll never be. Maybe I'm afraid that when I stop talking to you in my head, you'll really be gone.
And the truth is, I still want you to know everything.
Even if it's just in my imagination.
Even if none of it ever reaches you.
Even if the version of you I talk to now is just a stitched-up memory.
Because the version of me that loved you? He's still here.
He never left. He never will.
And sometimes…
He still needs you.
Even if it's just inside his own mind.
Because in here, at least, you still care.
In here, you still ask me how my day went. You still remember my birthday. You still get annoyed when I overthink, and tell me to "shut up and eat something." In my head, you never grew distant. Never stopped replying. You never left me on read like I was a stranger.
Maybe that's the only place I get to have you now— where I control the silence, where the love never felt one-sided. Where you laugh at all the right moments and stay just a little longer when the world outside gets too loud.
I know it's not real.
I know I'm just building stories to fill the silence you left. But sometimes… sometimes the made-up versions of people are kinder than the real ones.
And I need kindness these days. Lots of it, to be honest. Even if I have to borrow it from memories and daydreams.
Some nights, I find myself talking to you in the dark. Not out loud— just quietly, in thought.
Telling you things I couldn't say before.
Telling you things I wish I had.
Like how I never blamed you, even when it hurt like hell.
Or how I still look for your name when something good happens, when someone messages me, out of reflex.
Or how I haven't found a way to stop loving you that doesn't feel like I'm erasing myself, too.
I think that's another most painful part.
That love doesn't just disappear when a person does. When they remove you from their life.
It stays.
In the corners of your thoughts.
In the echoes of conversations that never happened.
In the way I still pause at the sound of a message that will never come.
I wish you knew how loud it is in my head sometimes.
How much space you still take up.
How your name is still saved in my phone, because deleting it would feel like the final goodbye —
and I'm just not ready for that.
Maybe I will never be.
So I'll keep talking to you like this.
In half-sentences. In passing thoughts.
In quiet moments when no one's watching.
I'll keep writing letters you'll never read.
Telling stories you're not in anymore, but somehow still are.
And You cannot take it away from me. Or make me stop like before. Ever.
I'll keep holding on in the softest way I know how—
By pretending you're still listening.
And maybe that's sad.
Or maybe it's just human.
But for me, it's enough.