what we were
i loved you in the smallest ways. in the calls that lasted too long, in the nights I fell asleep knowing you were still there, in the shows we watched until they became yours even when you weren’t beside me. i loved you in your ordinary days the tired ones, the quiet ones, the days when you didn’t feel like yourself. for three years, you were more than someone i loved. you were home. and maybe that’s why i held on so tightly when home started feeling a little farther away.
you said you needed space. you said you wanted to find yourself. and i tried to understand while a part of me was screaming, please don’t forget to find your way back to me. i wanted reassurance. you wanted room to breathe. i reached for you. you pulled away. and somewhere between the things i needed and the things you couldn’t give, we stopped being us against the problem and became you against me, me against you, both of us forgetting that neither of us was supposed to be the enemy. i don’t think you stopped loving me all at once. i think sometimes love gets quieter before you realize it’s leaving. and i think that’s what hurts most. because i know you loved me. i know i loved you. and somehow those two things weren’t enough. you told me you were numb. you told me you didn’t know
how to fix it. and i heard you, even when every part of me wanted to say, i’ll wait. i’ll try harder. i’ll love you enough for both of us. but i finally learned that i can’t carry a relationship for two people. so here i am,
three years of memories in a life that suddenly has an empty space in it. i still hear you in songs you used to play. i still see you in the things we made routine. sometimes i even dream that you came back and everything is easy again. in those dreams, there is no distance. no numbness.
no breakup. just us. and waking up is its own kind of heartbreak. but i don’t want to remember us only for how we ended.
because before the ending, there was laughter. there was comfort. there were nights i felt completely loved. there was a boy who knew things about me i thought id never tell anyone. there was a girl who believed in him even when he couldn’t believe in himself. there was an entire life
we thought we’d have. and maybe that’s what grief is: not just missing a person,
but mourning the future you thought you were going to live together. i don’t know
if our story ends here. maybe someday our paths find each other again. maybe they don’t. but i hope wherever life takes you, you become the person you always wanted to be. and i hope i become someone who no longer has to beg to feel chosen. because i will always love the version of us that existed. but i am learning that loving what we were doesn’t mean i have to keep waiting for what we could have been. you were my home for three years. and now, I’m learning how to come home to myself.