This is an unreasonable amount of time to keep staring at a closed door. But here I am, still staring.
Maybe it’s because with this door, I lost something I don’t think I’ll ever get back. Back then it wasn’t planned, it wasn’t expected. It came like a miracle I didn’t even know I wanted until it was there. And maybe I should’ve fought harder. But how do you hold onto something someone else doesn’t want? How do you carry a future alone? I didn’t know how, and so I didn’t. And that’s the guilt I’ve been carrying — the quiet, heavy kind. The one that doesn’t have a sound but lives in your chest anyway.
I think that’s why I’ve never let myself admit that I might want it again someday. Because somewhere deep down, I believe I already lost my chance.
Last night I dreamt of what I lost. And when morning came, the grief pressed down on me heavier than before — a familiar burden that still manages to catch me off guard. How did I let it slip away? How did I miss something that was once so close?
And it isn’t just this. It’s everything that’s happened since — the health scares, the diagnoses, the growing certainty that it may never happen for me now. Not that I was planning it, but some tiny part of me always hoped. And now knowing it won’t, it breaks my heart in a different way every single time I think about it.
She Was Sea 