Monday Morning, 9:25 a.m.
“I never thought I’d be the one to hurt you.”
His voice still echoes like a ghost inside my skull. Over and over. A cruel lullaby. A haunting. No matter how tightly I press my hands to my ears, I can still hear it.
I hadn’t slept. Couldn’t. "My eyes raw, burning and swollen from crying all night on the floor of our closest, wrapped in the last thing that smelled like him. I clung to his faded navy sweater that was fraying at the sleeves, like it could stitch me back together. But in reality, it only made me unravel faster."
Why?
He didn’t tell me. Not really. Not in a way I could make sense of. Just soft-spoken nonsense and beautiful lies that sounded like poetry when I needed answers.
“Everything is temporary. Isn’t this merely one of those things?”
God, I’d whispered that so quietly, like maybe if I said it small enough, it wouldn’t be real. Maybe he’d deny it, call me dramatic, pull me into his chest and say we’d be fine. That it was just a moment. A phase. A storm we could weather.
But no.
No, he looked at me with that empty kind of love—the kind that used to burn and now just glowed faintly, dying like the last ember in a fire we both let go out.
“We’ve worn a mask for so long” he said, brushing the hair from my damp cheeks, “we’ve forgotten who we are under it.”
But I remember.
I remember loving him so hard it hurt. I remember giving him all of me—every cracked piece, every sacred secret, every light and every shadow. Somehow, it still wasn't enough.I should’ve begged louder. Should’ve screamed. Should’ve demanded more than whispered explanations and tired clichés. But I didn’t. I just stood there, shaking, choking on my own silence while my world cracked beneath my feet.
“You’ll always be worth the pain” he said.
He kissed me. Not like he loved me. Like he was saying goodbye to a version of himself he no longer wanted to carry. And then he left. Just like that. He walked out of the home we built—walked away ofme.
And I shattered.
Not loudly.
No.
The worst kind of heartbreak is quiet the kind you bleed from silently while the world keeps turning, expecting you to show up. To work. To smile. To be okay.
But I’m not.
I’m not okay.
I don’t even know who I am without him.
And all I can think is:He promised he’d never be the one to hurt me.
But he has.
He did.
And somehow… he still is.
Hair sticking to my face I stumbled out of the elevator, coffee in one hand, a mess of files and newspaper clippings in the other and I was already late. Carrie was going to lose her shit. Monday morning meetings were sacred, scheduling for next month’s magazine had probably already started, and here I was, barely upright and running on caffeine, shattered nerves and tears.
I didn’t see him until I slammed straight into his chest, hard. The mail guy...Arms full of the weekend’s correspondence, and now, my chaos.
“Oh my god I’m so sorry,” I stammered, flinching as we bumped heads on the way down. He bent to help, and our skulls cracked like we were in some slapstick scene that would’ve been funny if my heart wasn’t still bleeding all over the inside of my chest.
“Don’t sweat it, babe.”
