Maybe you’re right.

Maybe you were always destined to outrun me. To outgrow this. To want a life that never asked you to slow down.

And maybe that’s okay.

You were never meant to stay still. You were never meant to fold yourself into the shape of Sunday mornings and grocery lists and a kitchen where we’d argue over which brand of coffee to buy.

I think I knew it the first time whenever you talked about the bright lights - the cities that never slept.
I should have understood you were never going to be content with four walls and the quiet hum of something ordinary.

But God, I wanted that.

I wanted the simplest things—your hair still damp from the shower, your hand on my chest when the nightmares came, your laugh echoing through rooms that never needed an audience.
I wanted dinners that weren’t remarkable to anyone but us. Evenings where you let your ambition rest for a few hours and just let yourself be loved.

Even if you asked me now where I saw myself in ten years,
I’d still picture the same scene: you, barefoot in our kitchen, music playing soft enough that we could still hear each other breathe.
I never needed more than that.

But I think you did.

You said you couldn’t stand the thought of settling, like it was a kind of death.
And maybe it would have been, for you.
Maybe the idea of being mine in a quiet life felt too much like disappearing.

And I’m sorry—
I apologize if I ever made you feel trapped.
Freedom is something you always deserved, and I swear to God, I tried to give it to you.
I tried to love you without a cage. I tried to hold the door open, even when it broke me to watch you walk through it.

I tried not to take it personally.
I tried to understand that some people can only belong to the world.
That some hearts will always be restless, no matter how much love you pour into them.

But the truth is, I would have traded every ambition I ever had just to come home to you.

I would have let the years catch up to me.

I would have let time soften all the sharp edges I carried—if it meant you’d stay.

If you make it—and you probably will—
When you stand on a stage with your name glowing brighter than any city skyline—
When you toast to your own legend in restaurants I’ll never see—
I hope you think of me, if only for a moment.

Not with regret.
Just with the small, quiet knowing that someone out there would have chosen you over every spotlight.

That someone would have built a life so simple you might have mistaken it for small.
But it wouldn’t have been.

It would have been everything.
It would have been enough