if I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more

"If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more."

You haven’t read Austen in years, not since high school when books were your refuge from a world that never quite made sense. Back then, they were more than stories; they were your escape. You’d retreat to your room after another loud argument between your parents, curling up in a corner with a dog-eared copy of Emma or Pride and Prejudice, feeling the weight of the pages as though they were a promise of something better.

You’d immerse yourself in the clever, complicated dance of unspoken love and misunderstandings, letting the rhythm of the words calm your racing thoughts.

You never thought you’d be here, thinking of Austen at all, much less with this line echoing through your head. It’s almost laughable, how you’ve come full circle, how the words that once seemed so distant now feel like they were written with you in mind. You used to think the idea of love being “too much to say” was just the stuff of fictional heroines, but now, standing here in your quiet apartment, it’s the only truth that makes sense.

Your well-worn copy of Emma still rests on your nightstand, spine cracked, pages curling slightly. It’s been years since you’ve read it in full, but you’ve never been able to let it go. Not entirely. The book is a reminder of the girl you used to be-- quiet, uncertain, hiding behind characters who, in their own way, were just as lost as you were.

You’d never admit it to anyone, but sometimes, you still turn to it, the comfort of familiar words settling into your bones, soothing the restlessness you can’t quite shake.

Because how do you talk about a love that still clings to you after six years? A love that lingers like a ghost in the corners of your mind, no matter how hard you try to exorcise it.

You’ve moved on-- at least, that’s what you tell yourself.

You had Summer, a peds nurse who smelled like lavender and always made you laugh with her terrible impressions of hospital staff. She was the burst of sunshine you didn’t know you needed, her strawberry blonde hair catching the light like a halo, framing her face with an effortless warmth that felt like home. Summer had this quiet but certain way of slipping into your life, like sunlight pouring through the cracks in a shuttered window.

For a while, being with her felt like the lightest you’d been in years since.. well. Since. She brought a sense of ease you hadn’t realized you were missing, as if her presence could dissolve the heaviness you carried without even trying. She’d show up with coffee on long shifts, her smile so bright it chased away the exhaustion clinging to you. She left sticky notes in your locker-- dumb jokes, ridiculous doodles, and occasional affirmations that shouldn’t have made you grin as much as they did but always did anyway.

For eight months, you thought maybe this was it. Maybe Summer was the kind of love you’d been searching for-- steady, warm, uncomplicated. But the laughter started to fade. Little by little, the cracks started to show.

She didn’t understand why you never wanted to talk about your past or why you’d shut down whenever she asked about the person who came before her. “It’s like you’re here, but not really here,” she said one night, and it stung because she wasn’t wrong.

When it ended, it was mutual in the way breakups never really are. There were no fights, no dramatic ultimatums, just the quiet realization that you weren’t what each other needed. She deserved someone who could give her their whole heart, and yours was still tangled up in someone else.

Then there was Josh, the ortho surgeon with the easy smile and the annoyingly perfect hair. He was confident in a way that bordered on cocky but never quite crossed the line. You liked that about him-- that he knew who he was and didn’t apologize for it.

Josh was different. He didn’t pry. He didn’t ask questions you couldn’t answer. He was perfectly content to keep things surface-level, and for a while, that was exactly what you needed.

You spent a year and a half building something with him, or at least trying to. On paper, it made sense. You both worked long hours, understood the demands of the job, and could talk about things no one outside of medicine would ever get.

But compatibility isn’t the same as connection. There were moments-- those easy, in-between moments-- when you’d catch him looking at you, like he was waiting for something to click, something deeper to spark. But it never did. It was comfortable with Josh, like slipping into an old sweater-- soft, familiar, and warm-- but there was no depth to it. It was just easy, and that was all it would ever be. He was the in-between guy, the one you were with because it was simple, not because it was meant to go anywhere.

And you both knew it.

The end came quietly, like a book you set down one day and never pick up again. He moved on, and you did too, neither of you looking back.

Now, there’s Emily.

She’s smart, grounded, and kind. An oncologist from Portland who visited for a case a few weeks ago and somehow ended up in your life. It’s new-- delicate in a way that makes you feel like you’re holding something fragile in your hands, afraid that one wrong move might shatter it.

Emily is the kind of person who makes things feel steady, like the ground beneath your feet is a little more solid when she’s around. She has this quiet confidence, the kind that doesn’t need to fill the room but somehow does anyway. She listens more than she speaks, always meeting you with understanding instead of judgment.

On your second date, she showed up with a coffee order she’d guessed based on one offhand comment you’d made the week before. You laughed when she got it exactly right, a small thing that shouldn’t have meant as much as it did. It was the kind of thoughtfulness you weren’t used to-- gentle, unobtrusive, and genuine.

She’s good for you. You know that.

She asks about your day and actually listens to the answers, never rushing you to move on to the next thing. When you’re with her, it’s easy in a way that feels unfamiliar, like you’re learning what it means to be cared for without conditions. You could even see yourself loving her someday.

But love feels like a distant shore you’re too afraid to swim toward.

Because when Emily smiles at you, there’s a part of you that aches. Not because she’s doing anything wrong-- she isn’t. She’s kind and patient and everything you could ask for. But she isn’t her.

You hate that thought, hate how unfair it is to both of you. She deserves all of you, not just the parts what wasn’t carved out and taken when you were left behind. That name is embedded in you, her name etched into the spaces between your ribs like a secret you’ll carry to your grave. And yet, no matter how hard you try, you can’t seem to let go of the past.

There are moments when you catch yourself pulling back, afraid to let her in too much. You tell yourself it’s just because it’s new, because you’re still figuring out what this is. But deep down, you know the truth.

You’re scared.

Scared of opening yourself up again, only to watch everything fall apart. Scared of letting her see the parts of you that are still broken and wondering if she’ll stay anyway. Scared of finding out that love doesn’t feel the same when it isn’t her.

Emily is standing at the edge of your life, waiting for you to let her in. You want to. You want to believe that you can. But every time you try, you feel the weight of a name you haven’t said out loud in years pulling you back.

Mika.

You don’t talk about her. Not with Emily, not with anyone. You’ve learned to dodge the questions, to shrug and say you’ve had your heart broken a few times like it’s nothing.

Like you’re fine.

And most of the time, you are fine. You go to work, you spend time with your friends, you go on dates with Emily that leave you smiling even hours later. Simone drags you to yoga classes that leave you groaning but oddly centered afterward, and Blue sends you ridiculous memes at all hours that make you laugh out loud when you probably shouldn’t-- like during rounds or in the middle of an M&M conference.

Lucas has dinner with you at least once a week, always showing up with takeout because he claims your fridge is “a desert wasteland.” He’s still terrible at hiding his emotions, so when he gives you one of those long, searching looks, you know he’s waiting for you to say something. But he never pushes. He’s gotten good at distracting you instead-- talking about Simone and their latest almost-fight or whatever bizarre thing Blue did at work that day.

With them, it’s easy to believe that you’ve moved on. That you’ve built a life that doesn’t have space for the past anymore.

But then there are nights like this, when the silence presses in, heavy and unrelenting. Nights when your apartment feels too quiet, even with music playing in the background and your phone lighting up with Emily’s name.

These are the nights when your thoughts drift to her.

You’re in bed, your phone on the nightstand and your mind miles away. Emily texted you earlier, something sweet about looking forward to your plans this weekend. You haven’t answered yet. Not because you don’t want to, but because you can’t find the right words when your head is full of Mika.

If you loved her less, you might be able to talk about it more.

You might be able to tell Emily about the way Mika used to say your name like it was a spell only she could cast. Or how she once stayed up all night with you after a bad shift, her ridiculous playlist of ska and early 2000s emo somehow making the darkness feel less heavy.

You remember her laugh. God, her laugh. It’s the kind of sound you don’t realize you’re holding onto until it’s gone, echoing in your memory like a song that never fades.

But the memory that sticks the most, the one that cuts the deepest, is her touch. Not just the casual brushes of hands during surgery or the way she’d nudge you with her shoulder when she thought you were being too serious. No, it’s the times when her touch was deliberate-- her hand on yours, grounding you; the warmth of her fingers on your neck the first time you kissed her.

You try not to think about her too much. You try to focus on the life you’ve built, the people who care about you, the woman who’s trying to carve a space in your heart.

But you can’t. You can’t tell Emily, or anyone else, that there are pieces of you Mika still owns. That when you think about love-- real, messy, all-consuming love-- Mika’s face is the first thing you see.

You think this is crazy. Your therapist told you once that grief and love are tangled things, that sometimes it’s not the person you miss but the way they made you feel.

“It’s about the connection,” she said, leaning forward in that careful, practiced way that made you feel like a specimen under a microscope. “What they represented for you, how they filled a space in your life.”

You nodded because it made sense at the time. Mika was your first real connection- the first person who saw you, not just the version of you that others needed. You’d had relationships before (boys, girls) each one a fleeting attempt to understand what it meant to love, what it meant to be seen. None of them ever felt quite right, though. They were like puzzle pieces that almost fit but never fully clicked into place.

Then Mika happened, and everything shifted.

But this, this thing you had, this thing you still absurdly yearn for, doesn’t feel like just a connection. It feels like her.

Because when you close your eyes and picture what love should look like, it’s not some abstract feeling or a placeholder for something missing. It’s Mika. Her laugh, her ridiculous socks, her voice saying your name like it was the answer to a question you didn’t even know you were asking.

Your therapist also said healing isn’t linear, that it’s okay to carry pieces of the past with you. “The goal isn’t to forget,” she’d said, smiling like this was supposed to be comforting. “It’s to integrate.”

But you don’t know how to integrate Mika into a life where she’s not here. You don’t know how to stop seeing her shadow in everything, or how to explain to Emily why you hesitate when she talks about the future.

You know it’s unfair-- to Emily, to yourself, to Mika, even. But knowing doesn’t make it easier.

You roll onto your side, staring at the shadows on the wall. It’s been six years. Six years of trying to convince yourself that you’ve moved on. But here you are, still holding on to the fragments of what could have been.

If Mika loved you less, maybe she wouldn’t haunt you like this. Maybe she would’ve stayed, or at least said goodbye in a way that didn’t leave you bleeding.

But she didn’t.

And now, you’re left with a love too big to talk about, too heavy to let go, and too stubborn to fade. It lingers in the quiet spaces of your life, in the moments between breaths, in the pauses between sentences. It’s not the kind of love you can put into words-- it’s the kind that settles deep in your bones, that aches in the places you thought had healed.

Some nights, when the world feels still and Emily is asleep beside you, you let yourself remember. You let yourself sink into the what-ifs and could-have-beens, into the memories that feel sharper in the dark. You wonder if Mika ever thinks about you, if she carries the weight of you the way you carry her.

And maybe that’s the cruelest part-- the not knowing. The silence that stretches between you like an endless canyon, the questions that will never have answers. Did she leave because she couldn’t stay, or because she didn’t want to? Did she love you as much as you loved her, or was it always destined to be one-sided?

You’ll never know.

What you do know is that Mika is the kind of love that changes you. The kind that burns so brightly it leaves scars, but also lights the way forward. You hate that you can’t let go, but you also can’t bring yourself to regret it. Because even now, even after all the heartbreak and the unanswered questions, you’d choose her all over again.

If love is a choice, then Mika will always be yours.

But life isn’t a poem or a grand romantic gesture. Life moves on, whether you’re ready for it or not. So, you do what you’ve always done: you put one foot in front of the other. You laugh with Simone, let Lucas tease you about your terrible taste in movies, roll your eyes at Blue’s endless sarcasm. You kiss Emily like you mean it, because you do.

And yet, late at night, when the world is quiet and the weight of the day feels lighter, you close your eyes and find yourself whispering her name into the darkness, as if it might echo back to you.

It never does.

Some loves are meant to be lived. Others are meant to be remembered.

And Mika Yasuda will always be both.