The Lost Diary #4 | Face of the Past

The Life of The Lost Girl: a creative fictional diary, sometimes based on certain factual truths.

Face of the Past

I saw him again in my dream, a face from the past. He was standing there and our sights diverted to each other’s. I felt my heart sink lower in my chest, words get caught inside my throat and my eyes burning and tearing from the sight of him. I hesitated for a moment, my body freezing on the spot, stopping right in front of him.

His Adam’s apple lowered inside of his throat. It had been so long since I last saw his face and since I last embraced him in my arms. I could feel tears building in my eyes—tears of sadness, frustration and anger. Everything came back to me in that instant—the pain, the joy: him. All of our memories together flood my thoughts within seconds, and from the way he was looking at me with sadness and pain in his gaze, he must have felt the same way, too.

The distance between us became too much to bear, and in those same seconds, we both wrap our arms around each other in a tight embrace. I wanted to cry in his arms, I wanted to tell him how much I missed him, how much it hurt to lose him, how much it broke my heart to know things would never be the same. But as those seconds ticked on, I wanted to push him away, I wanted to ask him why he left me alone, why he changed into a person neither of us liked, I wanted him to tell me why I was never good enough.  

I held onto him even tighter, taking everything in. I had already lost him once and seeing him leave again would only bring the pain I buried years ago back. He pressed his face against mine, the intimacy and burnt chemistry relit as if time never went by.

        “I’ve missed you…so much,” I cried into his shoulder, my tears soaking into his shirt.

He doesn’t say anything, but tightened his embrace. There were so many things I wanted to tell him, so many things I wanted to admit to him, like if I could turn back time, I would make him see me, the shy and awkward girl with a confused heart, and I would have told him how I really felt. Would things have been different? Would he still have changed? Would he have…loved me?

With a soft sigh, I kissed his shoulder one last time. We let each other go and I look straight into his gaze. Where do I begin? Where does this end? But the more time I looked at him, the more the look in his eyes started to change, along with his expressions and the warming sight of him I used to love. He was an illusion. He wasn’t the same person anymore—he died years ago. 

He smiled and he began to fade away. My lost heart got the better of me and I reached out for him—my hand shaking. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I watched him disappear once again. As memories of him drowned my thoughts, I lowered my hand and watched him fade away. And in those last few moments, the sadness in his brown eyes returned. I realised then in that moment that this was it, my final goodbye—a goodbye I never got.

Just before I turn and walk away for good, his arm reached out for me, wanting me to come back. He looked helpless, sad and confused—all the things I felt when he pushed me away. I looked at his fading hand, then back to his gaze. 

        “Goodbye,” I cried. 

And like the past, I leave it behind and turn my back. He was, he wasn’t, he never was meant to be, and now, I can finally accept it. He was my past, he was a time, he was a face, he was a light, and now, he is nothing.