You’re on the other side of the world,

and somehow, despite all my efforts to evict you, your ghost is still right here standing in the corner of my thoughts. I try to ignore it and I don’t see it during the day, but night is always when it’s the loudest and most noticeable. Parts of you still echo within me; parts I had tried so hard to change, but somehow, they still remain. I hear you in the things I say sometimes, and it doesn’t so much hurt anymore, but it feels... empty. I know I don’t love you like I did, but I think I still care. Even if I shouldn’t. You ghosted me, after all. Right after my birthday. Later that month, you called me, drunk and stuck in your car at a party, nearly admitting to loving me before biting your tongue and telling me that you wished I was there. Then you vanished until I could not take the long absence anymore. I could not bear the loneliness you left me to keep, and so I left you for once. I had meant it when I said I would always care and that we could still be friends, but watching you ignore me daily became too much. The pain of not only losing the love I thought I had but of also losing you became too much for me to ignore or push away. So I finally unfriended you. I didn’t block you because I wanted the door to still be open to you, but I unfriended you so I would no longer see you carry on without me and seemingly without the pain that I was enduring. You didn’t seem to hurt at all, and that hurt me the most. Then a month later, after I’d had my time to grieve, you messaged me. Suddenly appearing in my life as I hoped you would, but the message you sent was only a request for me to block you. You said that I clearly didn’t have room in my life for you since I unfriended you and that I should just block you. You only noticed this a month later, so how was it that I didn’t have room for you? You hadn’t even been watching me like I was watching you. You told me not to bother saying anything back, either, knowing that I would wholeheartedly disagree with your previous statements. I struggled with what I should do, but I had guessed that maybe this was your version of hurting. Maybe you were lashing out because you expected me to suffer where you could see it and now you didn’t know what to do. So I thought I was doing the right thing when I honored your request. Then it was silent. For months. Then a year had gone by, and all that was left of you was a few fond memories and mannerisms I hadn’t been able to shake. My heart didn’t hurt anymore, and I was able to breathe without thinking of you again. Sometimes, something would remind me of you, and I’d get the urge to try to check on you by lurking over your social media, just to make sure you were still breathing and to satiate my curiosity to where life had taken you since I left, but I resisted. I did unblock you at some point, but I don’t remember why. I didn’t think about it anymore. Then there were no more urges to check, and I no longer needed to know. I was okay with you being a ghost of my past and nothing more. Surely, you didn’t think of me, and so I would no longer think of you. It’s been over a year, we’ve both moved on and grown. Until I woke up at 4:37A.M. to a notification that you liked my recent post on Instagram. I know your username by heart, and would not mistake it for anything. I was scared to even check to see if it was real. Why would you be seeing that? Why would you like it? So many “why”s without answers, but when I checked the post, your name wasn’t there. Did you like it and then unlike it realizing it was me? How would that have happened? You’re not even following me. Why were you on my page then? Did you get the urge like I used to? Were you just checking on me to see that I was still breathing?

Do I haunt you like you haunt me?