MAROON MEMOIR | 2 Days 'Til V-Day

I didn’t leave because I stopped loving you.

I left because loving you started to cost me pieces of myself I couldn’t afford to lose.

You weren’t cruel. Though that would’ve been easier.

You were gentle in the way that keeps a person hoping, soft enough to make me stay, distant enough to make me question if I was asking for too much. You gave me warmth in fragments, and I held each one like proof that someday it would become permanent.

I kept stitching meaning into moments that were never meant to hold that much weight.

So I made a promise.

Not to you.

To myself.

I promised I would walk away before I started calling breadcrumbs a feast. Before I convinced myself that almost was enough. Before I began shrinking my needs, folding them smaller and smaller, just so I could fit inside the space you were willing to offer.

Because I know how I love.

I love like I can endure.

Like patience is noble.

Like if I stay steady long enough, someone will eventually stay back.

But loving you began to feel like standing in a doorway that never fully opened. Like waiting for a decision that kept being postponed. And every time you hesitated, I told myself to understand.

I understood so much that I started abandoning myself.

Distancing myself doesn’t mean I don’t feel it anymore. It just means I finally chose not to reach. It’s me unclenching my hands. It’s me learning how to sit with the ache instead of begging it to leave. It’s me holding my own hand when yours keeps slipping away.

And maybe one day you’ll realize it.

Maybe you’ll come back steady, certain, ready.

But I won’t be there to hear it.

Not because you didn’t matter.

But because I am done proving that I do.

Author's note:

Loving you will never be part of my regrets.

But quietly hoping that the love I shared would

eventually be returned with the same weight,

that was the mistake I kept calling patience.

And you being a part of my life

will always be something I hold gently.

Not with bitterness.

Not with blame.

Just with the quiet understanding

that I loved you fully,

and learned, a little late,

to love myself the same.

P.S:

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