There was a man I really liked. He was around eight years older than me, and we used to work in the same office, although we were in different departments. At that time, I was 26.

I felt that he liked me too. There was a time when he was waiting for me because he wanted to meet me, but I was busy with some work in the office and couldn’t go to meet him. He got angry about it. From the next day, he started ignoring me.

I tried several times to talk to him and understand what had happened, but he remained very cold and angry. I felt confused because I didn’t understand why he was reacting so strongly, especially because we weren’t even in a relationship at that point.

Later, I decided to contact him on Social platform. I sent him a message and also sent him a connection request. Instead of addressing what had happened between us, he said that I had probably sent the message to the wrong person. He basically said that I had connected with the wrong Prateek and hoped that I would find the right one and settle my issues.

That really hurt me.

I kept the Social Platform request pending for about five months. I didn’t cancel it because somewhere inside, I still hoped that he would accept it and we would finally talk. But after five months, I became frustrated and cancelled the request. Before cancelling it, I sent him a message saying, “I hope this chapter will close. Sorry for everything.”

After I sent that message, his behavior became even colder. I felt that he was somehow expecting me to take the first step again, but I didn’t feel comfortable doing that anymore. I had already reached out to him, and he had ignored me for months. I felt that if he genuinely wanted to talk to me, he could have made some effort himself.

There was another thing that made me feel that he did care about what was happening. I came to know that he was talking to his friends about me and asking them for help. One of his friends even came in front of me and told another friend that he kept saying, “Yaar, woh nahi bol rahi hai” (she’s saying no to it). So I felt that he was also affected by the situation.

At one point, I sent him another request from a Social Platform after about six months. That request also remained pending for around a month, and he still didn’t accept it.

There were also times when I felt that he was trying to make me jealous by talking to other girls. I didn’t like that at all. Maybe I misunderstood his intentions, but that’s how his behavior felt to me at the time.

A few years later, I contacted him again through a fake Social account. I used the same name, but I had a different work history on that account. I sent him a message saying that I had accidentally sent him a message because messages to people outside your network were not free six or seven years ago on this Platform, and I had meant to message someone else.

Actually, that message was partly a taunt because of what he had told me many years earlier.

He accepted that request and asked me, “Were you in Private Bank for a short while? I think we have connected before.”

I replied, “No, we never connected before. I was not in Private Bank.”

Later, he simply said, “Ah, okay.”

I always felt that he probably recognized that the account was actually mine, especially because of the specific reference to six or seven years ago. I expected him to ask me how I knew about that time or whether I was actually the same person, but he never asked.

That also hurt me because a part of me wanted him to say, “I know this is you,” or at least ask me why I had mentioned those years.

I think what I really wanted was a conversation.

Even when I sent the closure message, I secretly hoped that he would stop me and say, “Can we talk?” But instead, his behavior became even colder.

Looking back, I sometimes feel that he expected me to keep taking the first step, apologizing, explaining myself, and trying to fix everything. But I had already tried many times. At some point, I felt that I couldn’t keep bending myself just to get a response from him.

The hardest part for me is that I still liked him. Even today, I can admit that I still have feelings for him. He was very handsome, and I was strongly attracted to him. But at the same time, I didn’t feel emotionally safe with the way he handled conflict and communication.

I wanted someone who would simply talk to me when there was a misunderstanding. Even a simple “Can we talk?” would have been enough for me.

Instead, I experienced a lot of silence, uncertainty, and mixed signals.

I don’t know exactly what he felt or what was going on in his mind. Maybe he was hurt, maybe he was angry, maybe his ego stopped him from reaching out, or maybe he simply didn’t know how to handle the situation. I can’t know that for sure.

But I do know how I felt.

I felt that I was always the one trying to understand, trying to communicate, and trying to keep the connection alive.

And that is probably why this story stayed with me for so many years.

Sometimes I feel that I wasted ten years of my life thinking about him and wondering what could have happened if I had handled things differently. I often blame myself and think, “Maybe if I had just bent a little more, maybe everything would have worked out.”

But now I am slowly realizing that a relationship cannot be built by one person constantly taking the first step.

I still like him, but maybe we were simply not meant for each other. Maybe we were from two different worlds, especially when it came to communication and handling misunderstandings.

What hurts me the most is not only that I lost him. It is that I never got the closure or the honest conversation I wanted.

I wish we could have simply sat down and talked openly about what happened.

But I am trying to accept that I may never get all the answers.

Now I want to stop living in that chapter. I want to become stronger, focus on my career, build a future for myself.

I can’t change the ten years that have passed.

But I don’t want to lose another ten years trying to understand someone else’s silence.

I still have feelings, and I don’t have to pretend that I don’t. But I can choose not to let those feelings control my future.

Maybe this was a chapter in my life that was never meant to have the ending I wanted.

And maybe now it’s time for me to write a different chapter.

What if we had just talked?

I’ll probably never know.

And for the first time, I’m okay with that.

— The End