The Ethics of Missing Someone

Can we mourn a love while still wishing them well?

I dreamt I was smoking again. That’s how this starts. Not with a phone call or a coincidence or some sweeping realization, but with the sharp pull of nicotine in a dream—slow, indulgent, inevitable.

I haven’t smoked in weeks. That’s not nothing. Anyone who’s ever cycled on and off with cigarettes understands that each week is a small rebellion. You count them like clean days. You build identity around abstaining.

So to dream of smoking is to dream of betrayal. Not just of the body, but of the version of yourself you’re trying to become.

And in the dream, she was there too.

We were on a balcony somewhere in Asia. I couldn’t tell if it was real or remembered, but the light had the same softness I associate with late summer. We passed the cigarette between us like a secret. I said something. She laughed. It was not dramatic. It was not tragic. It was just… intimate. The kind of moment you forget to remember, until it returns in sleep with all the clarity of longing.

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I met her last summer. She lived in Tokyo. I didn’t. She grew up in Arizona and was a citizen, but had no plans to return to the States. That fact hovered over every interaction. There are relationships that begin with hope and others that begin with a clock ticking down. Ours was the latter. We never pretended it would last, and because of that, we moved through it freely—fast and fearless. As if love could be measured in depth rather than duration.

What I didn’t understand then—what I do now—is that some moments outlast the time they were given.

It’s been months. I hadn’t planned on writing about her again. I thought the story was too small, too unfinished, too ordinary. But then she showed up in a dream, handing me a cigarette I no longer smoke, and it occurred to me that maybe the story hadn’t ended. Not really.

And then, this morning, I saw she’d posted on Instagram for the first time in over six months. A slideshow. Four images.

Cherry blossoms—perfectly in season. A photo of her new place, the one she told me about before I left. Two selfies. In the background: CDs and an ashtray. A cigarette in her hand.

She posted while I was sleeping. While I was dreaming, I imagine. It felt both inconsequential and important. Like a signal meant only for me, though I know better than to think that way. Still, her reappearing on the timeline the same night she reappeared in my dream. That’s the kind of coincidence you pretend not to notice while secretly assigning meaning.

I didn’t comment. I just watched the post appear, unannounced, like a door cracked open somewhere I thought had been sealed. She still had the same tilt in her smile, the same way of holding her cigarette between thoughts. But something in her posture had changed—lighter, like she was no longer expecting to be hurt. I zoomed in on the edge of the frame, saw the soft blur of something that might have been incense, or just smoke.

There’s a word for moments like this, but I don’t know it. Something between déjà vu and grief. The sense that a life you might have lived is still unfolding, just not for you.

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There’s something about that city in the summer. The air hangs differently. The ground pulses beneath you. There was a week where we didn’t leave each other’s side—curry shops and karaoke bars, silent walks through Kamikitazawa. We slept side by side in a bed too small, limbs folded into each other without concern for comfort. She liked Seven Stars (as do I now). I liked the way she laughed when I teased her about it.

She told me about her ex-boyfriend. How he didn’t treat her well. How she thought that was normal. I didn’t try to fix anything. I just tried to be kind. I wanted her to know what it felt like to be loved without needing to earn it.

Maybe that was naive. Maybe it was enough.

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When I left Japan, we didn’t make promises. Still, I thought about going back. I looked at flights for March. I got a job just to make the trip possible. There was a version of the future where we traveled again—outside Tokyo this time. Kyoto, maybe. The mountains. I wanted to see her in new light, on new trains, between new silences.

But she stopped replying in January.

I waited. I told myself she was busy. I told myself it didn’t mean anything.

Then in March, when I’d mostly given up, she responded.

It was 4 AM in Japan. She was at karaoke with friends. Her messages came in scattered bursts, like she was both excited and unsure. She said she probably shouldn’t be talking to me. That her boyfriend wouldn’t like it.

Her boyfriend.

That was the first I’d heard of him.

I sat with that message longer than I should have. Not because I was shocked—people move on—but because there was something final about learning it this way. Not from silence, but from a sentence typed in the dark of a Shibuya karaoke bar.

Still, she said he was good to her. That she was happy. That I had helped her realize she deserved kindness.

She thanked me.

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I should have been grateful. I should have felt proud, even. Isn’t that what we all claim to want? To leave people better than we found them?

But the feeling wasn’t pride. It was something quieter. More dissonant.

A happiness braided with heartache.

She told me that months earlier, her boyfriend had asked her to block me. That she had refused. That it caused a fight—one that almost ended things between them. She didn’t tell me this as a plea or a confession. Just a fact. A thing that had happened while I was still checking my phone, wondering why the thread had gone cold.

And that’s the part I keep returning to.

Not the smoking, not the dream, not even the boyfriend. But the refusal.

She didn’t block me.

Even when someone she loved asked her to. Even when I was no longer in her life, just a ghost on a screen.

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There’s a version of this story that ends there. Neatly. With gratitude. With closure.

But life doesn’t always offer clean lines.

I think about her more than I admit. Not every day. Not even every week (or so I tell myself). But in the quiet moments. On slow mornings. When I smell something faintly floral and familiar. When I pass someone on the street with her posture.

And, apparently, in dreams.

I think about the way she looked at me when I said goodbye at the station. How neither of us cried. How I had told myself that was maturity. But now I wonder if it was just shock—two people still pretending it wasn’t over.

I think about how love changes shape. How it doesn’t always end when it leaves your life. Sometimes it just settles in a quieter part of you.

I don’t know if I’ll see her again. I don’t know if she still thinks of me. I don’t know if I even want to revisit what we had, or just preserve it in the amber of memory.

But I know this: not all love stories need to continue to matter.

Some are meant to happen only once. Briefly. Brilliantly. And then dissolve, leaving behind traces that surface only when the right wind blows—or when the wrong dream arrives.

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I haven’t smoked since that night. I don’t plan to. But the craving now feels different. It’s no longer about the cigarette. It’s about what it represented: a moment of connection. A breath shared in silence. A hand passing something back with unspoken trust.

I don’t know if it was her I missed. Or the version of myself that could still believe in that kind of moment. I only know it still hurts, in ways I don’t name out loud.

On that balcony in my dreams, I was a little more open. A little less afraid. I wanted fewer things and felt them more deeply. Maybe that’s because I was with her.

And maybe that’s enough.

Maybe the real reconciliation isn’t between love and self-interest, but between who we were and who we’re trying to become.

Maybe she was a mirror.

Maybe she was a lesson.

Maybe she was just a girl I once loved on a hot night in a city far from home, who taught me how beautiful it can feel to be chosen, even for a moment.

And so my final act of love is this:

To stay silent. To want nothing. To let you go, and keep the ache.

And maybe, somewhere out there, you woke up thinking of me too.

Our first date. I find myself often wishing I had taken more photos that summer.

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Did this remind you of anyone? Anything you’ve carried quietly? I’d love to hear in the comments or via email.