I’ve just opened my eyes. On my phone—a message continuing yesterday’s conversation, and within it a sentence that made me stop and think. Does no one really think of me? Am I just insignificant to them? No. I simply seek attention where I choose to give mine. I want her attention—no one else’s.
But what’s really happening? A man I walked away from, who had tirelessly poured his experience into my mind until the very end, only intensified after I confessed my betrayal. A young man, whose love is in surgery and whose family’s troubles can be read in his eyes after a call with them, stands firm like a statue—yet through his own pain sincerely asks if I’m not completely alone here. A woman, lost in the alleyways of her own thoughts, betrayed by life, searches for hope in me.
And I walk past them, eyes fixed on the emptiness inside me, running on autopilot. Isn’t it the same? Isn’t the woman whose attention I seek also closed off in such depth? Does she even know what hurts me—or is she just moving along a pre-set path, guided by some unseen satellite?
So what’s right? To accept it and not expect her reaction? To give in to the people around me?
It reminds me a little of the film Yes Man—and that one had a happy ending. Maybe it’s enough to understand that all I ask of her is honesty. For her to tell me, “No. Don’t count on it.” That would end the uncertainty and the hope that will inevitably disappoint me.
Honesty matters. I know it—I haven’t given it to everyone myself. But now I understand that I have to change that.