Maybe We're a Sitcom

Maybe we’re a 10-season sitcom. The kind where the two leads clearly have feelings from the start, but somehow – somehowthey never get the timing right. You know what I mean. Like Ross and Rachel. Or Ted and Robin. Harvey and Donna. DJ and Steve, who took 25 years and a reboot just to get back together. It’s always the same recipe, sparks, chaos, bad timing, emotional whiplash, and eventually, something clicks.

I can’t tell what season we’re in right now, but it doesn’t feel like the finale. From the very beginning, there has always been something between us. We never said it out loud, but it was there, hanging quietly in the air. We were young. I remember that night I waited for you at the hot air balloon fiesta. I was twenty and ready for something real. I thought that would be the scene – the one where everything shifts and the theme music swells. But I miss your message, and you didn’t show.

And not long after, you had someone else. A new character, a new storyline. And I pretended not to feel like a background extra in an episode I wasn’t written into. Still, you kept coming back. Unscripted moments. A late-night message, a passing thought. And then, just when I thought it was the series finale when you got married, it wasn’t. There were still mixed signals, hints, buried in small talk but sufficient for me to feel it.

But here’s the thing: I can’t be a plot twist in someone’s else love story. That’s not how this is meant to be. That’s not how I want to be written. So, I kept my distance, let the storyline go where it needed to. And maybe we were both a little toxic for each other. Not in loud or obvious ways, just in that soft, quiet way where no one gets hurt… but no one really heals, either. Still… you linger. You always linger. Like a character that refuses to leave the screen. We’ve never had the big season finale moment. No confession in the rain. No dramatic airport scene. Just these long pauses between episodes, and a whole lot of wondering if this is still part of the same storyline.

Whether we’ll always be a missed story or our story takes longer to tell, a part of me still wonders. But right now, that’s how I’ll leave it. Not as ending, but as something that simply is, and maybe always will be.