I look in the mirror and see someone softer—
Not weaker,
But worn in a way love tends to leave behind.

There was a time I loved blindly,
Loudly,
Without asking if the ground could hold me.
I called it strength,
But it was fear
Wearing confidence like perfume.

Now, I measure my footsteps.
I pause before giving too much.
I speak, not to be heard—
But to be honest.

You wouldn’t recognize the way I love now.
Not because it’s gone,
But because it’s grown quiet,
Rooted deeper,
No longer searching for permission to bloom.

I am still learning.
Still unlearning.
Still loving.

But I am not the same.
And maybe—
That’s what healing really is.

You said you needed distance, to step away,
But the world saw something else.
Our faces disappeared from your feed—
No trace of the smiles we once wore.
The photo on your phone, once us,
Now a blank space.

I told myself it was practical, logical—
But the ache did not listen.
It felt like a declaration, a silent broadcast:
“I am no longer taken.”

And yet, I am still tethered—
Bound to a past you are so quick to untangle.
You said it wasn’t about me,
But the absence screamed louder than words.

Did you think fading from view would ease the weight?
Did you believe I wouldn’t feel it?
But I did. I do.
You erased us in pixels and frames,
While I held on, clutching the empty space.

And still, I wonder—
Was it easier for you that way?

I find you
in the empty side of the bed,
where your warmth once lingered
long after the mornings faded.

You’re in the songs
that shuffle too perfectly,
whispering our yesterdays
through static and melody.

In chipped mugs,
in street names,
in the scent of rain on pavement—
you linger,
a shadow stitched into
my every ordinary thing.

I sweep, I sort, I breathe—
and still,
I gather pieces of us
like glass I can’t throw away.
Too beautiful,
too broken,
too much a part of me.

Did you ever think of staying?
Or was leaving the only way
you knew how to love me?

Was I too much,
or not enough?
Did I ask for things
you couldn’t give,
or did you offer less
than you were able?

I wonder if you held back your truth
to protect me,
or to protect yourself
from watching me fall apart.

The answers don’t come.
But the questions—
they stay.
Lodged somewhere between
my ribs and my memory,
quiet,
persistent,
unanswered.

Sometimes I want to hate you—
for breaking our family.
No, we didn’t have children,
but we had Skye.
And in my heart,
we were our own little world.

Sometimes I want to hate you—
for the heartbreak that lingers,
for tossing me aside
like I was nothing,
like we were nothing.
But I can’t.

No matter how hard I try—
to hate you,
to dull the ache—
I can’t.
Because I love you.

And I know your reasons
weren’t about us.
You thought you had to push me away
to do what you believed was right.

But I hate that you couldn’t lean on me,
that you carried it all alone.
You took on burdens
that weren’t yours to bear,
and still—
I admire you for it.

I hate that you put us on hold.
I hate how you’re slowly erasing me.
The days are bearable,
but the nights?
The nights are endless.

I wake up expecting to find you,
to see a message saying you miss me.
But I don’t.
And I hate that
it’s always me reaching out first.

I hate that you chose for us,
without trying to find another way.
I hate that I still feel you
in the empty spaces.
I hate that I pray—
every single day—
for you to come back,
to say you were wrong.

I hate this fragile hope that won’t die,
the belief that somehow
we’ll be better—
that love will make us stronger.

But most of all,
I hate that I’m alone in this hope.
I hate the masks I wear,
the smiles that lie to the world.
I hate how much I miss you.

I hate that I don’t know
how to be near you
without wanting to hug you,
kiss you,
hold your hand.

I hate that I fear so much—
the thought of you
being gone for good.

And I hate
that no matter how much I wish I didn’t—
I still love you.

Every moment is a choice—
and I chose you.
Not once,
but over and over,
in silent seconds
and loud, unraveling days.

I chose to love you
when love wasn’t easy.
When your edges were sharp,
when your silence felt like distance—
I stayed.
Where others might have walked away,
I dug in deeper.
I held on tighter.
I believed.

I chose to see the good
even when the bad tried to steal the light.
I chose to forgive,
to understand,
to wait.
To believe that what we had
was worth choosing again.

And I would still choose you—
in another life,
on another street,
with all the same cracks
and all the same flaws.

But you didn’t choose me.
Not when it mattered.
Not when staying meant fighting.
You chose to go
when I chose to hold on.
You chose duty,
and I understand that.
But still—
it wasn’t me.

And maybe that’s the difference:
I saw love as a promise.
You saw it as a place to leave
when life got heavy.

I’m sorry for the times I silenced my voice,
Swallowing words to keep the peace.
For dimming my light to soften the shadows,
And calling it compromise.

I’m sorry for doubting my worth,
For the moments I let self-blame consume me.
For believing I wasn’t enough,
And letting pain define who I was.

I’m sorry for hiding parts of me,
Thinking they were too much to share.
For shrinking,
Thinking smallness would keep me safe.

I’m sorry for believing love meant endurance,
That devotion was measured in sacrifice.
For holding myself to an unyielding fire,
Just to prove I could stand the heat.

But today, I see it now—
Strength is not the absence of breaking.
It’s the courage to gather the pieces
And build something whole.

Today, I apologize to the mirror.
Not for the tears I shed,
But for the years I spent believing
I was too much or never enough.

Today, I give myself permission
To stand tall,
To embrace the parts of me I tried to hide.
I forgive myself.
And in that forgiveness,
I find the freedom to begin.

Today, I choose to love myself
Without apology.

The cold has a memory —
it lingers in the corners of empty rooms,
settles into the spaces you once filled.

No matter how many layers I wear,
it finds a way to my skin,
a whisper of what used to be warmth.

The windows rattle,
the floor sighs under footsteps that aren’t yours,
and I tell myself it’s just the season.

But the truth is,
it’s not the winter that chills me —
it’s the memory of you.

I could trace the days before you left,
Each one certain, unshaken —
Love blooming beneath our feet.
We built forever without fear.

But the day came like a storm
I never saw darkening the sky.
No warning, no shifting winds,
No fluttering leaves to alert me.

Your words were quiet, deliberate,
Like you’d rehearsed them in the mirror.
You said it was what you needed to do,
A choice for your family — not for us.

But clarity can still wound.
Even understanding doesn’t soften the impact.
And now the air is heavy
With all I didn’t see coming.

The silence between us is deafening —
A chasm carved by all we left unsaid.
Each word we swallowed lingers,
A ghost that haunts the empty space.

I hear your absence in the quiet.
The stillness hums with what was once ours —
Laughter tangled in whispered promises,
Love unspoken but deeply known.

But now, I only hear the questions.
Do you miss the way my voice
Filled the silence like sunlight?
Do your thoughts wander back to me
When the night grows too long?

I reach for words that might mend,
But none can bridge the distance.
So I sit with the silence,
And try to understand
what it’s telling me.

Some nights,
it feels like I’m running out of air—
sinking slowly into the kind of quiet
that wraps around your chest
and doesn’t let go.

I reach for you in the stillness,
my hand stretching toward
a presence that isn’t there.
The space beside me answers
with nothing but still air.

The days are gentler.
They offer distractions—
tasks to complete, people to smile for,
moments that keep the ache at bay.

But the nights?
They are heavy.
They close in like water,
and every thought grows louder,
shouting in the silence.

Memories rise like waves.
And I can’t stop myself
from wondering—
do you ever lie awake,
missing me too?

There are days when the past
hits me like an uninvited guest,
its presence sharp, unwelcome.
Memories once soft and warm
now turn into needles,
pricking at the places I thought were healed.

I remember laughter that filled the air,
and the way we used to talk like time had no hold on us.
But now those moments feel foreign,
like ghosts drifting in a forgotten room.

The sting of a kiss that meant everything
now lingers like a wound that refuses to close.

I wish I could erase it all,
but even the hurt holds pieces of us
that I’m not ready to let go of.