He didn't try to fix me or soften me. He saw the sharp edges and the dark corners and the damage I tried to hide, and he didn't look away.
I think about him on the nights when breathing feels optional. When the walls press in and the silence gets too loud.
I think about what would have happened if I'd told him the truth instead of a lie designed to save his life.
If I'd trusted him to fight for us instead of deciding he was better off without me.
If I'd chosen differently.
But I didn't.
And now I live in a beautiful house with a man who knows exactly how to hurt me without leaving evidence. A man who wears me down in places no one can see.
Some nights I want to go back. Find the girl I used to be, grab her by the shoulders, and scream:Run.
But I can't go back.
And she can't hear me.
The loneliest partisn't the bruises or the fear.
It's the erasure.
Being a ghost in your own home.
Watching yourself disappear in real time.
Knowing with devastating certainty what it feels like to be seen. To be wanted. To be loved without conditions—and never experiencing it again.
The truth is,some loves don't come to save you.
Some loves come to mark you.
To burn themselves so deep into your bones that nothing else will ever fit in the space they leave behind.
To ruin you for ordinary.
To make sure every gentle touch feels like a pale imitation.
Every whispered word sounds like an echo of something realer.
Every almost feels like a mockery of the once.
He was my once.
Not the love I was meant to keep, but the one I was meant to be haunted by.
I hold onto the memories anyway. Guard them like contraband. Because some nights they're the only proof that I wasn't always this hollow.
The only reminder that once, before everything fell apart, someone saw me.
And in another universe, one where I was brave enough to stay, maybe he's still seeing me now.
That'sthe thing about ghosts.
They don't haunt houses.
They haunt the people who can't stop remembering.
