No one admits it publicly, yet almost everyone has lived through it privately:
that one person you were never supposed to care about… but did anyway.
They weren’t your partner.
They weren’t “yours” in any official sense.
In fact, life would’ve been easier if your paths had never crossed.
And yet—
their presence lingers in your mind long after they’re gone.
Why does this happen? Why can a single connection feel more haunting than the relationships we commit years to?
Because some people don’t enter our lives to stay.
They enter to wake something up.
Maybe it’s a need you buried.
Maybe it’s a hunger you ignored.
Maybe it’s the version of yourself you lost along the way.
The most controversial truth is this:
We don’t miss the forbidden person—
we miss who we were when they were near.
That spark.
That freedom.
That emotional electricity that made you feel intensely alive, even if it came with guilt or confusion.
People judge these attachments as weakness or moral failure. But in reality, they often reveal our deepest emotional truths—the ones we don’t dare speak in the daylight.
Maybe you stayed loyal.
Maybe you walked away.
Maybe you never acted at all.
But the memory remains, not because of lust, but because something inside you recognized a connection that mirrored your unmet needs.
Here’s the uncomfortable question:
If something forbidden fills a space your “real life” never does, which version of you is more honest?
We don’t choose who shakes our soul.
We only choose what to do after the shaking begins.
Some move on and forget.
Some carry the memory quietly for years.
And some—though they won’t say it out loud—still wonder what would’ve happened if life had been a little less complicated.
Because the hardest goodbyes are not the ones we speak—
they’re the ones we keep inside, pretending they never existed.
(inspired by Oh, Daniel)
Mike m. luster 