Do you still love him?

I'm always caught up in this frequently asked question whenever I bump into someone who knew our story quite so well. I slur over certain facts and disregard what was asked. I avoid what needs to be avoided and redirect the question to something else. Because when people start bringing up your name to topic, I always remain tight-lipped.

Whenever I'm left alone, I wish I could dispose to tell the truth. Memories bounce back as I stumble into things that remind me of how talkative I was when it comes to you. And now everything has changed, I became a skilled liar for pretending not to care and came up with stories that embodied lies behind the truth, the truth I refused to tell.

Just yesterday someone reminds me of how our birthdates come after the next. How close our stars align in the vast universe. How poetic we have become in our own style and language. And how compatible we look together in their naked eyes. But knowing all these things, I realized the process of moving forward would be tougher than I have planned.

You would still see your name appear in comments section, those I tagged you with memes I can't put into words. Those posts I find the feels of tagging someone, posts I couldn't tag you anymore. I admit, I hate that I am not winning the break up because I am too in love to move on, but as they always tell, you will never understand something until it happens to you, until you're the girl who can't be moved.

I walked down the lonely street and run into people coupling up, I despised how they add fuel to the fire I was putting out when I should be seeing free-willed ones enjoying the moment in solitude. I could see right through their faces the glow marked by hopeless romantics. I could see how their faces light up being with someone else, so in love.

When we ended, I've spent Friday nights getting wasted because they told me it gets better when you chill out. But I've kissed more bottles than people and I still couldn't find the cure in them. Perhaps I can't find one in the bottom of every glass. Perhaps I can't find another love in all those pubs. So I wake up at Saturday mornings wearing nothing but a broken heart.

I got along with strangers and spent most of the time in circles while the rest are seated next to their partners. I always get awkward being the third wheel in their relationships and show up to a party with a phone packed up with unlimited data as my shield. I did more of what forgetting means and started seeing other men.

Then I met someone weeks after and showed me motives of interest. And not just quite long ago, I shut the door that leads his way to me. How could I let someone in if I am not ready yet? Because in all honesty, at the event of every guy I've met and spoken with, I still see your face in them. I still see you in someone else.

And last night I thought of you again. The silence of the darkness was deafening. I couldn't help not to cry from reasons that were uttered many times. Reasons so worn-out people already heard not just twice. Was it just me or do I just miss you that much? Because there are times I wanna go back but realized I only miss the memories but not us.

So I grab a pen and start scribbling another version of pain that talks about us again. Now people might tell me that I've lived up my life just for you, that I've ceased existing in others because I remain locked up inside your world. But I'd like to think that they're wrong. I have reasons, reasons only the broken people understood.

Of course you can't let go easily of the past. Only those with no memory can. So it's fine to live in the moment too much. It's fine to be wrapped up in the memory of someone who's already gone. So on a scale of 1-10, with ten as the highest possibility of completely moving on, I always fail at saying ten. I don't think if I could ever make it to ten.

Do you still love him?

The question I was always held in a position where the answer was the same as the first. The only question in the world I wish you would ask me instead of them. The question I prepared the answer long ago. But it's been sixty days already since you left, do you still love me?

And here I am creating a bottleneck, caught-up in a deadlock traffic in the middle of the hi-way. I wish I could just walk and pace that corner where I could still catch you before you go.

But love left us already, so I am taking the other way. Because when love leaves, it leaves by itself and not with someone else. And the one that was left, was me, the one who hadn't moved on yet, the girl who can't be moved after sixty days.