My Loyalty to Her Ghost

She disappeared from my life

without a reason,

without an explanation,

without even a proper goodbye.

Years passed, and I slowly realised

that somehow

I was still emotionally stuck on her.

No dating, no talking.

No seeing each other, no calls and no texts.

Yet my brain was still behaving

as if the relationship

was only on pause.

I couldn't understand

why I was staying emotionally committed

to someone who is no longer

a part of my life.

I had no interest in new connections,

because somewhere inside me

there was still a small hope

that she might return.

So I secretly kept a little space for her

in my heart.

There was no relationship anymore,

but emotionally,

I was still holding on.

Maybe because our story

never really had an ending.

There was no goodbye,

so my mind kept filling in the blanks.

I replayed our conversations.

I remembered the chemistry.

I thought about the late-night talks.

I kept asking myself

what went wrong

and how things could have been different.

And then I realised something painful.

Distance had made her

look better than she really was.

I was remembering the chemistry,

the beautiful moments,

the possibilities, the potential.

I was not only missing her.

I was missing what I thought

we could have become.

And no real person

could compete with her anymore,

because the woman I was comparing them to

only existed in my memories.

She had no flaws there.

No disagreements, no distance and no silence.

Only the parts I wanted to remember.

So I remained unavailable

because a tiny part of me was still waiting

for the old version of her to return.

My present was being judged

against someone who wasn't even there.

And every time I checked for her,

I kept her alive in my mind.

Her silence became a puzzle

I kept trying to solve it.

I searched for meaning

in the absence of a message.

I treated her silence

like a secret message

that I just hadn't understood yet.

But the truth is simple.

There is no relationship

without communication.

No relationship without effort.

No relationship

without two people choosing

to be part of it.

My feelings are real.

But the relationship is not.

And maybe that is

the hardest thing to accept.

I am not waiting for her anymore.

I am waiting for a message

that may never come.

I am waiting for a person

who exists mostly in my memory.

And while I keep waiting

for something that no longer exists,

my present keeps passing me by.

Maybe letting go doesn't mean

that I stopped loving her.

Maybe it means I finally stopped being loyal

to a relationship that ended long ago.

I called it love.

Maybe it was ghost loyalty,

remaining faithful to someone

who was no longer there.

By

Sanji-Paul Arvind