Unrequited love doesn't end when you stop hoping. It persists in odd ways — in the specific way you feel when their name comes up, in the awareness that the feeling was entirely on your side, in the strange grief of mourning something that never actually existed.

There's very little acceptable space to talk about this. You can't say you're grieving something that was never real. You can't explain the weight of a feeling that no one else witnessed.

Here, you can. Anonymous thoughts about unrequited love don't require the other person's participation or anyone else's understanding. The feeling was real. It happened. This is where it gets to be said.