You don't miss them. You miss who you were with them.
On the selves that only exist inside certain connections
There’s a version of this essay that’s already been written a thousand times. The one about staying too long in something bad, the one about rose-colored glasses and selective memory, the one where a therapist would say you’re trauma-bonded or attached to familiar pain.
That’s not this essay.
There’s also the cultural scripts we’ve been handed for how to categorize the people who mattered. Soulmates: destined, meant to be, the finish line of love. Star-crossed lovers: would have worked, but circumstance intervened. Toxic relationships: bad for you, lesson learned, go heal. The one that got away: timing was off, still wonder what if.
This isn’t any of those either.
What I’m talking about is harder to name, because we don’t really have language for it. The person who wasn’t good for you, maybe the relationship was a mess, maybe it ended poorly, maybe you wouldn’t even call it a relationship, but something about the specific configuration of your two minds created a frequency you’ve never been able to hit with anyone else.
Not before. Not since.
There’s someone I still think about more than I should. This is hard to admit because if you asked me to list what I liked about him, I’d struggle. I could tell you what was wrong faster. Like the way he made everything about himself, or his inconsistencies—present and electric one week, vanished the next, as if I’d imagined the whole thing. The sense that I was always auditioning for a role I’d never quite land. I didn’t even like him, really. At least not in the way you’re supposed to like someone who takes up this much space in your memory.
And yet.
I understand, intellectually, why inconsistent attention can feel like a drug. I know the mechanics of it. The dopamine spikes, the scarcity, the way the nervous system confuses unpredictability with depth. I’ve read enough to dismantle the whole thing in theory. But that’s not quite it either.
Because it’s not totally him I miss. When I’m honest with myself, it’s not his laugh or his opinions or even the way he touched me. What I miss is someone I can’t get back to. Someone who doesn’t exist anymore.
Me.
A version of me.