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Slowly, without asking to bloom again. I’ll try to stop searching for you in places I know you no longer are. I’ll try to let you go without waiting for you to come back with the answer I once hoped you’d find. I’ll try to feel all of it. The disappointment, the anger, and the sorrow. Even if I still understand why it all had to break. I’ll try not to reach for a version of us that never learned how to stay again. I’ll try to accept that this was the very last page. I’ll try to say no when my heart begs to remember you one more time. And I’ll try to stop looking for a new way to love you from afar. And I’ll learn to do it better. Day after day after day.

Because today, I still love you. Maybe it’s not even you anymore, but the version of you I kept safe in my head. Maybe that’s why the feeling still stays like they haven't heard the news. Because I keep thinking. Maybe you were just as lost, and just as hurt. That maybe the only reason we bled was because we didn’t know how else to hold our pain. And so the words we said only sounded like weapons. I keep thinking that someday, you’ll find answers you haven’t yet found the words for. And I once wondered: is it love when we believe in it, or is it love when we accept what it never was? I still don’t know. But I do know this: I still check in on you. Still care about things you won’t share. Still wonder about how your heart is doing today. So maybe not now. Because now, you still live somewhere in me. Even when you’ve long been gone. And maybe not yet. Because there are things I still want to write. Yours, I still want to hold space for. And this one thing I still want to say: I still...

Every word before it was said. Every shift before it arrived. But now, that knowing leads nowhere. It’s trapped inside you. Restless, useless. You know the signs. You see the shifts. You feel the ending, the anger, the hate, pressed between words. But what can you do with all that knowing? Because the world you memorized before it ever spoke a word, now moves on its own. And even when you still understand every sign, hope, silence and mess, there’s nothing left to reach for. You can’t even let it be something. It comes in waves, big and small. And sometimes, the smaller ones hurt even more. Because those you go looking for. You just don’t understand anything anymore.

 This is hard. It’s just really hard.

Either a reason to stay, or a reason to leave. A truth to uncover, or a wound to let go. A place for chance, or a way back home. Even at every crossroads, I always found a new direction. Because somewhere, somehow, I believed we’d meet again. Maybe for closure. Maybe for clarity. Maybe because I just wanted it to be. But now, knowing— truly knowing— that we were meant to end, has left something in me unheld. I keep reaching for something I can’t name. I keep searching, but there’s no thread to follow back. I find explanations, but they don’t fill my chest. I find clarity, but it fogs over just the same. Maybe what I’ve lost isn’t just him. But the version of me who always knew what to do with the hope of him, in a life that used to make sense. Maybe what I’ve lost are all the reasons I stood still for so long. Now, I just don’t know how to stay, how to move, how to be okay, or not be okay, without a reason pointing me somewhere he might be.

It’s not a splintered collapse. Not a loud shattering. Not a flood crashing in to drown everything at once. It’s an emptied space inside you, growing wider by the day, pressing against your ribs, your throat, your will to keep going. You can’t fight it. You can’t fix it. You can’t even name it. But it settles in your spine. It’s not loud. It’s slow. It’s steady. Suffocating. Like your own body forgetting how to hold itself up. It doesn’t make you hurt to breathe. Maybe it’s just because you don’t breathe the way you used to.

At the corner where I said I’d moved on, my mind still makes room for him. Maybe I’ve accepted that he left. Maybe I’ve even stopped waiting. But the ghost of him still knows how to find me, right when I think I’ve forgotten the sound of his name in my chest. Maybe it’s the wound still mid-healing. The part of me trying to remember how safe it once felt. The kind of remembering that ruins all the metaphors I built. The one that said, none of them stands a chance against what we once were. Maybe it’s the part of me that doesn’t want to be wise, or rational, or healed. Or maybe it’s just the smallest, most stubborn voice, curled up in the dark. The one still whispering his name like it’s a secret, it doesn’t want to give up. A part that just wants to love him. Maybe it’s a selfish voice. Maybe it always was. But whatever it is, can you please get out of my head?

I’ve loved you in all the wrong ways— wrongly, messily, painfully. And maybe that’s not how we were ever meant to love each other. But there’s no other lifetime, no alternate universe where we get to try again. So I hope we both learn how to love better, even if it’s no longer for each other. And still as messy as before, now I’m learning to let us go, too.

It already passed the moment we said hello again. And it will pass through the happiest days, and the ones that weigh a little heavier. Eventually, the time I spent counting will slip by too. Seeing him again taught me that I'm allowed to be loved. And maybe, that’s exactly why we had to end. So I could learn that I can be loved by myself, too. And if one day this writing ever finds him, I just want to say, Thank you. For all of it.

The first time we broke up, I remember saying— I would never be able to let him go if the person next to him wasn’t me. It sounds like something you’d say in the middle of a quiet obsession. I know that now. But at the time, being with him felt like home. And losing him, felt like losing the only place I could return to. I didn’t see then. Some part of that “home” was built from how he showed up when I was far from my family, and far from my own self. Even when we ended, I still knew I’d meet him again someday. Though now I wonder. Was that knowing, a memory, a wish, or just a prayer in disguise? And when I did meet him again, and then lose him again, I found myself asking: Was loving him something I knew, something I wanted, or something I was still praying for? Was I in love with him, or just with the idea of being with him? Isn’t wanting to be with someone a form of love, too? Why, then, could I never picture a life without him, even if it terrified me while...

At first, I couldn’t understand. How two people who love each other deeply could still hurt just the same. How we could both feel seen and unseen, and loved and not quite right, at the same time. If I felt unloved gently, shouldn’t he have felt like he wasn’t enough? If he felt too much, shouldn’t I have felt left behind? I thought maybe what I felt should explain what he felt, that our aches should be the answers to each other. But they weren’t. Somewhere along the way, we both learned to listen more to ourselves. Maybe it was the way we mirrored thoughts, the way it all clicked, the way he understood me in ways no one else ever did— that was also the very reason we couldn't stay. Like a pair of shoes with two right feet. So close. But not meant to walk together. Yet somehow, I found comfort in knowing he’ll be loved better by someone who fits just right. His left. His match. And so, I feel relieved in the oddest way.

Not just one bad night. Not just one big disagreement. It was disappointment growing slowly in the silence where we should’ve spoken. It was misunderstanding left unchecked, until it hardened into distance. It was forgiveness given, but never fully felt. It was the same wound being touched in the same place, too many times. What broke us wasn’t sudden. It was the familiar way we kept circling back to the same pain with different words. It was one fight that led to another and another. And each explanation started to feel like both a reason and a goodbye. I was stuck in my frustration. So was he. I kept searching for something to fix, something to understand, to offer, while quietly wishing he would see me the way I needed to be seen. Because I knew him too deeply to ever unknow him. He had been too much of me, too much in me, for me to stand on my own without trembling. So much of my world had learned to orbit his. For so long, he was the gravity that kept me from floating away. On...

I spoke to him about what we both carried, what we once hoped for, and what we still wished for the years ahead. We agreed: there were mistakes. But also, so much we misunderstood. We felt the same thing. That strange, familiar sense of being meant for each other. So we chose to try again. This time, to build something lasting. And I believed everything that happened was our way of trying to bring love into form. Me, in my way, him, in his. But then I learned: loving someone deeply doesn’t always mean you feel loved in return. Because there were days I longed for his gentleness, even when I understood his reactions were shaped by wounds I left behind. Days we couldn’t meet in the middle, and I tried to hold space for the ways our histories shaped us. Days I felt guilty when I couldn’t keep up, even when I knew he only asked for things meant to help me grow. Then he also grew weary, watching me falter in the same places. There were times he gave, he tried, and he got hurt by the noise o...

I thought I was okay. Or at least, better than before. I thought I could see things with a clearer heart. How we unraveled, how it all came disconnected. I thought I could be grateful just because he was with me for a while. I thought I could feel peace, knowing he’s living the life he always wanted. I really thought I could. But some nights, the same truth screams louder. That we’re strangers again. And I still don’t know which hurts more. The idea that he would let go of me, or that he never wanted to, but had to. I still don’t know which weighs heavier. That he might be haunted by our memories like I am, or that he remembers me as a chapter long closed. I don’t know which ache runs deeper. That we were a rare eclipse, but only passing for a moment, or that no matter what happens, the universe will lead us to the right ending, even if that ending isn’t us. I thought maybe, this was how I’d finally learn to let him go. To find a new kind of safety. To come home to myse...

It's past the time we promised each other back then.

It felt like finding each other all over again. And this time, we didn’t want to let go, again. I knew what I wanted. And the more I was with him, the more I wanted it to last. If someone asked, "Why him?" I wouldn’t have a clear answer. Sometimes it was the peace. Sometimes the ease. Sometimes the way it felt like enough. Sometimes, there were no words at all. When I asked for the best to come find me, only when I was finally ready— he came. And he became everything I had written at the start of the year. He answered what I had been restless about, and questions I didn’t know I’d been asking. He brought back something I thought I had lost for good. I loved who I was when I was with him. And I loved that he was there with me. There were so many little moments quite and fleeting, that made me look at him and silently pray, “If he’s the one, please let him stay.” But I also knew, I was never ready for what would happen, if the answer turned out different. Still, even with all t...

But only lately did I realize the way I saw home also depended on how I first defined it. And all I knew back then was that he was my first love. So love, had to look like him. Or at least, that was the only kind I ever allowed myself to receive. Love, I thought, had to last. Had to be fought for. Had to never be lost again. In my eyes, he never stopped being the boy I first knew. Even after all our talks about growing older, about pain we carried, about how we learned to survive, he still looked like that boy who used to walk me home from school. The boy I loved so gently. I thought, that must be real love. To love someone just as they are. To ask for nothing. To simply be glad to be beside him again. Then one day, I caught myself feeling guilty for considering what I needed, instead of what he wanted. Guilty for feeling. Guilty for wanting time. Guilty for explaining so carefully, so softly, just so he wouldn’t hurt, even when I was the one struggling to breat...

I wrote many endings for us. Me—finally able to walk away. Me—finally able to forgive. Me—angry. Us—agreeing, once and for all, to close the door gently. I even imagined every possible path that could lead to each ending. I thought I was prepared. But if I’m honest, a part of why I came back, was because I knew I might see him again. And even after rehearsing every scene a thousand times, my heart still raced when one finally became real. There were too many questions at the start of our third beginning. Why did I come back? If we tried again, would it last? Did I never move on because it was unfinished? Or because my heart always came back to him? What made this time any different? Was I meant to end it, clearly and finally? Or was this another chance for us? What really happened before? What happens now? But months later, as we talked about that day we met again, he said that, I was the one who smiled so wide when our eyes met again. And so I took back what I once said: That I was ev...

I meant it. Year after year, I kept making excuses to reach out or at least to leave a small sign that I was still here, still waiting in the same place. And then, it was February. We spoke again, the way we always do. Finding our way back like we never really left. But it was me, again, coming forward with another excuse, trying to stretch a made up conversation into another possibility. Why did I always do that? All I know is: at the end of the day, my heart always chose him. Not because he was everything but because, maybe, he just felt more right. So I asked the one with the sincere heart to stop giving. Because there was still a story I hadn’t finished. Or perhaps, one I still didn’t want to finish. What I didn’t realize was how the guilt already rooted, would only grow taller, heavier, and wilder. I told that heart the truth, because I didn’t want to hurt anyone anymore. But then the guilt doubled. And somehow, I felt responsible for keeping the heart ok...

Then I met someone new. A kind, sincere heart, who never asked for anything. In a short time, and in the simplest way, he showed me I was more than enough. No questions. No demands. He was just, there. We talked about everything. Politics, childhood, dreams, faith, and love. But even then, something in my head wouldn’t stop. It laughed at me, said I should’ve known better. That I should’ve focused on myself. That I had no right to feel anything at all. And if I kept going, he’d see the truth that I’m not all that good. When I chose to receive, my mind whispered, isn’t it cruel to give him false hope? So I forced myself to feel ready. To receive. To give. To become. But still, I sabotaged it. I felt guilty for receiving, and guilty for refusing. Guilty for silence. Guilty for speaking. Whatever I did, even in my thought, my head always found a way to blame me for it all.