I am not the woman who walks away without looking back.
I am not the Hitchcock blonde, hair immaculate, heart untouched.
I am Jimmy Stewart—haunted, relentless, unable to stop circling the wound.
I do not numb. I do not forget. I do not file away my grief in neat little boxes.
I feel it. I hold it. I turn it over in my hands a thousand times, searching for the shape of truth.
I see my part in the breaking. I see his. I see the pieces we could have picked up together.
And still I see him walking away—not because I wasn’t enough, but because he couldn’t stay.
I don’t get the clean ending.
I don’t get the satisfaction of full stop.
I get the ache. I get the questions. I get the endless living with what is.
But I also get this:
I get to know myself down to the marrow.
I get the kind of depth only found in people who refuse to look away.
I get to stand in the ruins—not perfect, not whole, but real.
Not that regret ever bought something good.
Nonetheless it is a price some of us pay.
Is there a reason? No.
I am who I am. I didn’t want this mind, this heart, this burden.
But I accept it and move on.
Carrying that heavy burden.
Because he won’t.
A burden you carry for the love of what it once was.
And this love deserves a tabernacle, a stone tablet, something that survives us.
Because it was deep. And true. Never faked. Real.
But too human.
