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hey, i’m not sure if i should start by saying ‘dear diary’ as this is a single entry in my new journal but in exactly four days, it’ll be seven months since i stopped talking to minho.
i decided to stop all direct contact with him on the fifteenth of january in the year 2022. i feel so different now….i feel like i was set free and thankfully, i no longer feel sad about minho not wanting to be in a committed relationship with me. okay, that’s probably (...or definitely) a lie. i feel hurt because believe it or not, minho being my first proper male crush has affected me in so many ways. i once saw a tiktok that said ‘your first same sex relationship/crush is the worst’ and i’m honestly starting to believe it. lol.
for starters, i never really had my life planned out. i just wanted to be wherever minho was and thought i had to be the 'man' of the relationship because i was bigger in built (it’s an insecurity of mine, i wouldn’t say it’s me conforming to heteronormative ideals) but then i realised... it’s okay to just be me. i don’t need to be super masculine in order to gain his love. i love him and he loves me, even though most of his fictional male love interests (both two dimensional i.e., attack on titan’s erin and three dimensional i.e., vampire diaries’ damon) are big, strong, muscular men. call me weak or pathetic but that completely destroyed my self esteem and i’m still ashamed to admit it.
i don’t want to blame minho’s taste in men for my doubts in our ‘relationship’ but… i’d be a liar if i said him not wanting to pursue a relationship with me but keeping me so, so close to him while flirting with me for months didn’t give me so many mixed signals. anytime minho showed interest in another man, i felt doubt consume me and every night, i questioned whether he actually loved me. i cried every night too… i stayed up wondering whether he loved me platonically instead of romantically even after he confessed and said ‘yes, i love you so much’ and ‘oh my god i have a crush on you too’ last year.
those words meant so much to me because even though minho didn’t want to commit to making whatever we had official… even though minho sent me provocative pictures and told me his deepest darkest secrets… even though minho said ‘i don’t want to be in a relationship with you’ while singlehandedly making plans for our bright future in our big house in our backyard garden… he said he loved me. and that’s all that should matter…right?
i can’t lie, minho made me feel like i was being used. why did he want to do relationship-y things with me if he didn’t want a relationship with me in the first place? months after we both confessed to liking each other, we were obviously at the point where we were more than friends but his fear of commitment, his fear of attachment caused me so much pain… and even though he hurt me so bad, i still felt bad for abandoning him but on top of that, abandoning him may have been the right choice because i haven’t felt this good in a while.
for so long, i’ve been blaming myself. i told myself: ‘i’m not enough’, ‘i need to be like those fictional princes who wait for the oblivious love interest to realise after five hundred years that i’m the right one for you’, ‘i need to be more patient’ and ‘don’t complain about feeling used because minho might feel forced to be in a relationship with me’. i was wrong obviously and even if i did manage to successfully say ‘hey minho, i feel like i’m being used and that makes me feel worthless.’ i’m sure his answer would be the same. ‘no chan, i just don’t want to be in a relationship [with you].’
the funny part is, minho never directly said that he wanted us to be together (romantically) in the future but he still planned a future with the two of us living in the same house. i suppose that is an indirect way of saying 'i want to be with you in the future but not now' but either way, i was and still am so confused.
i hope it doesn’t sound like i’m possessive but i really just wanted minho to be mine. as a matter of fact, i wanted to be in a relationship with him because i loved him and i knew him for so long. i didn’t want him to be my boyfriend because i was touch starved. no. i really did love him. minho was supposed to be my first boyfriend. i could’ve been his first boyfriend too. as funny as it is, he fell in love with me first. he realised he liked guys first too.
along the way, i lost myself. i have felt true loneliness as the months progressed even when we used to text each other ‘goodnight, sleep well. i love you’ every night. do you understand how messed up it is to hear the words i love you (words i wanted and loved to hear from minho) being shoved down my throat every night and still feel confused and lonely? while feeling used at the same time? i couldn’t find it in myself to believe him when loving him felt like loving a guarded gate at times. one time, i’m allowed to enter and the next, i’m not. we haven't shared those words in months obviously and it’s sad how next year in january, it’ll be a year since i chose myself. it’ll be a year since i decided to let minho go and be happy.
anyway, there are so many different yet effective ways to express your love for someone. for example, there are probably four or five (i’m not sure, sorry) love languages i.e. acts of service etc… but if there’s one thing i should say, a long distance relationship isn't for everyone. oh, and not everyone wants to jump into a relationship from the get-go.
i believe i’m the type of person who craves words of affirmation. without it, i’m a mess. so, more often than not, i’d question minho's love for me. one horrible moment that would always stick with me, is the time when we kissed for the first time. over the phone, of course. i haven't seen him in person in over four years since i moved to australia and he stayed in south korea. (we’ve known each other since we were eight but i moved when he was fourteen). anyway, we were video calling and we both decided to lean in simultaneously to say goodbye. we ‘e-kissed’. i was a flustered mess. it was so stupid but so cute and i loved it anyway, i loved it so much. i really did.
but sooner or later, that feeling died. we were in a group chat and my friend asked minho if he had a crush. minho said no. minho said no. minho said no. i felt so horrible. did our kiss mean nothing to him?. it was so heartbreaking. i went offline. i went offline and i didn’t talk to him for a day. when i asked him about it, he said ‘i don’t view you as a crush, you’re more than that. im sorry it came off the wrong way’. i felt happy about that…but if i am more than a crush then why won’t you date me? does the concept of commitment scare him?
i wish that was where my doubts began but it all started when one day we were having a serious conversion and he admitted to ‘not knowing what the word love meant’. you’d think i’d say ‘i’ll show you what it means’ or 'we can create a new meaning together' but how can i when i’m in australia and he’s in south korea. that's not all by the way, he said ‘when i tell you i love you, i don't know what it means’. that broke me. that broke me. after that, he still continued to say ‘i love you’ every night and that pained me so much. who knew seeing the words ‘i love you’ could hurt so much…
the first time i asked minho ‘will you be my boyfriend?’ all i got was a ‘maybe. i don't know’ in return. so i went with ‘if you’re not sure then we can figure it out later, i’ll wait until you’re ready’ but a year and a few months later look at where we are. i gave up on him. i’m not mentally strong enough to handle being someone’s digital booty call. i couldn't handle mixed signals. i still can’t. at times, i feel like he said no because we’re young. we were sixteen when i confessed and he admitted to liking me back. i assumed he said no because he wanted to figure things out in his life first. i see him as someone who is level headed, smart and intelligent so i assumed this was him being rational but what if he’s not being rational at all? what if he's just as clueless as me and i’ve been putting him on a pedestal all along?
i hate minho but not in an ‘i want him to suffer’ way.. i’m just angry and hurt and disappointed about the way things went down between us. i just wanted more. i wanted us to have a title but that was damn near impossible because he didn't want that. i think he wanted to have someone who was available. someone that could be a friend and a lover all at once but with no strings attached. someone he doesn't have to commit to but someone he can at least have romantic feelings for without calling them his. i'm the opposite. i wanted to commit to minho.
ive known him for so long…i wanted him to be mine and mine alone but we're different people. we were just not meant to be and that's heartbreaking. i feel empty thinking about it sometimes, wondering where i went wrong and how i should've stayed and given us a chance but then i realise maybe, it was for the best.
although i secretly regret choosing to abandon minho, i’m going to keep praising myself for doing it. i was never happy for long periods of time when i kept in contact with him. flirting with him was so dangerously fun but i’d always feel so shitty afterwards knowing that he’ll never want me to be his. but now, i’m going to accept the fact that leaving minho made me angry, sad and hurt but happy. i feel so so so much better but i feel so resentful. because i lost so much time. i did love our times together i must say (especially the e-kiss). it’s still sad how the bad memories attached to our relationship currently overpower the good ones. but that’s how life works, right?
even now, i can see minho fawning over big strong men on his instagram story. his heart would probably be happy if he dated a muscular man in the end. on that note, i’d actually feel hurt if minho got a boyfriend this year... or next year, as toxic as it sounds. i’d ask myself why did minho choose him and not me? i was patient even when he clearly didn't want me. he didn't want me like i wanted him. minho wanted to be ‘e-friends’ with benefits but i wanted more. i wanted us to be something. i wanted us to have each other.
right now, i'm ashamed to even be writing this journal entry as tears fall from my eyes. minho probably deserves someone better than me and i thought i’d never find someone like him because he’s so great and i'm just me… and there's plenty of me’s around. i always thought my feelings and i were the problems in our ‘relationship’. i thought i was the problem so i felt so dirty.. so dirty when i was rejected by him. the fact that i'll never know how he felt when i left is still killing me and i’d love to know but opening that old wound again after MONTHS feels so repetitive and wrong and i'm tired…
to conclude, i’d like to say i have a new love interest. he's someone i like talking to. the fact that i've never considered him to be a rebound makes his presence so much better. he’s funny and we’ve been texting every day for months. we’re in the same sociology class in college. we have a shared interest in books and he reminds me so much of you but he’s not you and he’ll never be you and i don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. but on the bright side, he lives near me. we’re in the same country. like i said, long distance relationships aren’t for everyone. and even if i’m not sure if i'm completely over you. i will love to make some progress with my new guy. he doesn't deserve to experience what you did to me and that’s why i'm writing this in my journal. it’s my version of getting closure. i’ll never know when or if you were ever planning to get into a relationship with me and even if i’d love to know if you were ever considering it in the future, im glad to have found someone new who doesn't make me feel worthless. i can't wait to get over you.