u/Pure-Rabbit1655

there is a version of me that will never exist now. she wakes up months from today to a familiar notification, rolls her eyes at another “sweetheart,” smiles despite herself, and falls asleep believing that love can survive two imperfect people trying their best. she does not know that she is only imaginary. she lives in a future that vanished the moment trust did.

i keep searching for evidence that you were real. i type your name into my phone and every small tenderness comes back to me as if language itself is grieving. “thank you, sweetheart.” “you’re cute, sweetheart.” “i love you more, sweetheart.” i wonder if you knew that every ordinary word you left behind would one day become an artifact. i did not know i was living inside memories while they were still happening.

the cruelest part is that i cannot hate you, because you were never cruel to me. the cruelest part is that i cannot hate myself completely either, because i know my mistake was born from fear and not from a lack of love. so i stand in the impossible place between accountability and forgiveness, holding both until my arms shake, unsure which one i am allowed to put down first.

i wanted to leave this chapter with gratitude. i wanted to remember you as a quiet blessing that entered my life and taught me what it felt like to be chosen. instead, i carry the unbearable knowledge that my own hands closed the door i wanted so badly to walk back through. there is no greater loneliness than becoming the architect of your own grief.

you called me sweetheart so often that i forgot it was a borrowed name. i thought it belonged to me. i thought if i heard it enough times it would settle into my skin permanently, that i would always be the girl your voice softened for. now it echoes through empty spaces, looking for somewhere to land, and all it finds is silence.

i hope one day you remember me with more tenderness than pain. i hope the version of me that lives in your memory is not forever trapped in my worst decision. i hope you remember the conversations where i stayed, the nights i tried, the way i listened when your heart finally learned how to speak. i hope those moments survive me.

and if they do not, if all that remains is disappointment, then let this page hold the version of us that no longer exists. let it remember that for a brief and fragile moment, two frightened people found each other and believed they had outrun loneliness.

i will mourn you quietly.

not because i believe love is meant to last forever, but because there are some people who arrive so gently that when they leave, they take with them an entire language. the world still speaks, but it no longer sounds like home.

wherever life carries you, i hope someone receives the softness you gave so freely. i hope they answer it with steadier hands than mine. and i hope that when enough years have passed for regret to become wisdom, i will remember you not as the boy i lost, but as the boy who taught me that love asks for honesty long before it asks for forever.

tonight i will let myself grieve you.

tomorrow i will begin the difficult work of becoming someone who no longer mistakes being wanted for being loved, someone who no longer runs from the very thing she is afraid to lose. that will not bring you back. it will not rewrite our ending. but perhaps it will honor what we almost were.

you deserved my whole heart.

i wish i had known that mine was still learning how to stay.

looking for among us players

to the boy i couldn’t keep

Looking for a 3rd Creator for a Minecraft Island Survival Series