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To all the reasons why there's always space for him in me.  Not because of some glimpse of us. Not because some memory slipped through. It's just because I missed what it felt like to keep him close. I traced the places we passed. Replayed the little habits, held again our loud, biggest shared dreams.  I pulled out the feeling  of meeting him for the first time, and every time after that. The memories came not in order. As if they, too, had been waiting to be felt again.  His presence.  The way he gave me time. His laughter. The one that melts everything numbed. The one I swore I would keep safe for as long as I could. So today, I remembered him fully. Not to make sense of why. Not to search for lessons in the loss. Not to ask what went wrong.  I just let myself remember him. And the way he made me fall again, and again, and again, and again. And as much as I've tried to accept what is, I still find it easier to explain why it was only ever him.

I miss him more in all the places we never got to go. In the taste of something new he’ll never ask about. In the songs he’ll never hear, even though I know he would’ve loved them. I remember him in every little update I can’t send anymore. How the world is shifting. How I’m changing with it. How I lost reality I never lived. It would be easier if he only existed in the past. If missing him meant sorting through our finished frames until it ran out. But I miss him more from what was never captured. On the other side of the life we almost had, I still miss us there.

I wasn’t crying before.

That part of my life. It no longer feels like mine. Not fully. Not in the way memories usually do. Like something I woke from but still remember in my body. Like something I recall but no longer exists. I remember the feeling. I remember how loud it was in my chest. But when I try to speak it, I wouldn’t know who to tell— not without it sounding like fiction. So I keep it locked in the farthest part of my mind. A room with no space and no light. A place where I store what I can’t afford to feel again. I don’t bother visiting it. I don’t call it by name. But it happened. It was mine. It was real. As real as anything I live now. And yet, now it feels too far to belong to me. Too vivid to be a lie. Too distant to still be true. A misplaced memory and outlier in my timeline. Too real. Too strange. Too unreal for something I once swore was mine.

Not for anything, definitely not for anyone. So when someone stayed, I held on like it was the only way to choose myself. Because in their choosing, I finally found a way to silence the part of me that always asked: what made me a bad choice? Even if all I ever offered was a version of me still waiting to be rescued from herself. You see. Letting go felt too brutal. Too empty. Too much silence to carry alone. What do you hold when you stop holding the only thing you know how to hold on to? So I stayed because I was terrified of what I’d find without them. Or maybe I was just tired. Of being disappointed in who I couldn’t be. And too tired to hate myself all over again. That’s why it took so long to finally stop. But hey, am all good today.

Not really. Just something unplanned, that turned out to be a beginning. This time, I freed myself from the duty of trying. From the duty to hold, to understand, to accept, question, answer, and wait for something that never once met me halfway. And for the first time in months after everything fell apart, I felt tired in a way that didn’t scare me. Like my body was finally allowed to stop bracing for impact. The fog isn’t gone. But it’s thinning. And though the way out is still sunless, I can feel it. I can feel that there is a way out. Yes, it’s the irony that stings. And the hypocrisy that burns. That I gave so much grace to everything. Except for myself. That I kept waiting to feel like I was worth staying for. When it was always me I kept abandoning. I don’t know how long this will take. How much of me I’ll have to rebuild. Or how many days will still taste like survival. But for now, this is enough. More than enough. Tomorrow can come when it does. Yesterday can stay where it bel...