I think I always knew this about myself
that I am a lover, but also something else.
A leaver.
Not because I don’t feel deeply. I feel everything. That’s the problem. That’s the truth of me.
I feel so much that I eventually reach a point where staying starts feeling like betraying myself more than losing you ever could.
And that’s the line I can’t cross anymore.
I won’t keep choosing what hurts me just to stay close to what I love. I won’t keep calling that loyalty when it’s actually self abandonment dressed up in tenderness.
I’ve done that before. I recognize what it does to me now.
So I’m choosing something quieter but harder:
I’m choosing me.
Not in a clean, empowering way. Not in a cinematic way.
In a bitter, human, shaky way that still aches while I write it.
Because I still love you.
And I still know what it felt like to believe we could become something that held both of us fully.
But love that doesn’t choose me back in the same way I choose it… eventually stops feeling like love and starts feeling like I’m negotiating my worth in silence.
And I can’t live there anymore.
So I will go when I’m done here in this place inside me where I’ve already started leaving.
And I won’t look back.
Not because I don’t feel it.
Not because I didn’t mean it.
But because I finally understand that looking back is how I lose myself again.
I am a lover.
But I am also a leaver.
And this time, leaving is how I love myself enough not to disappear in love that doesn’t fully choose me.