You can let this go, soon. He has. One last wish of good fortune and happiness for him. One more hope for a long, healthy life. Then you promise yourself to let it go. Two decades is too long to rekindle anything that you can't promise you won't fuck up again.

Missing being friends with him, but also not trusting yourself to not fuck that up, too. Sure, that could be the trauma talking, the reinforcement of insecurities from the last relationships, old ghosts shaking your bones like cell bars and howling in your blood about not being worth the trouble...

The urge to clarify you don't want to beg to come back, just that you GET IT and he probably deserves to know and deserves to be vindicated, even if that's probably just the trauma talking.

The urge to emphasize you're happy for him, his fiance, whatever life he built for himself. His happiness.

Yeah, I'm fucked up and can't really be fixed, but you were the best, sweetest thing I had for that time and the only one who never hurt me while I dated you, even on accident. Even your dad was the best man I ever met who tried to kinda be "dad" like to me. And I fucked it up. And I'm sorry.

>:3 meoooowwww!

Okay, just shatter my entire world view like that??? I guess???

/Joking