[From the Diaries]
I loved us. God, I loved us so much it hurt.
From the very beginning, I gave myself to something that wasn’t whole. You weren’t really free, not then, but you told me you loved me. You told me I was yours. And I wanted to believe you so badly that I did. Even when the truth was right in front of me, staring me down, I closed my eyes and clung to your words.
Those months of waiting for you to finally choose me, to finally make space for me, nearly drove me insane. Months of questions with no answers. Months of waking up with a knot in my chest, wondering if I was temporary, if I was disposable. And every time I thought about walking away, you pulled me back in with those words: “I love you.” I wanted to believe them so badly that I let them ruin me.
And still, there were moments that felt like magic. Like that silly afternoon when BML wouldn’t work and I couldn’t pay for the lilies I wanted to buy for myself. I remember standing there, defeated, ready to leave them behind. And then you pulled out cash, like you had been sent by the universe to save me from walking away empty-handed. Such a small thing, but I carried it in my heart like proof that you would always be there for me. Proof that you could be the one.
But the truth is, I spent so long bargaining with myself. Telling myself that if I loved you enough for both of us, it would somehow be enough. Telling myself that your words mattered more than your actions, even when your actions told me over and over again that I wasn’t enough. I fought for us until I had nothing left to give.
And then, when I was already cracked open and bleeding, you finally fell in love with me. Or at least you said you did. The cruelest twist of all. It was everything I thought I wanted, but by then I was already too broken to carry it. My heart was so heavy with hurt that there was no room left for the love you were finally trying to give.
Still, I stayed. I believed you again and again, even after every broken promise. Until the last one. The one that shattered me in a way I don’t think I can come back from. That was when I finally understood: life with you would always be this way. Always me fighting. Always me begging. Always me hurting.
Now the pictures from those days show up sometimes, and every time they cut through me. In them, I look so in love, so devoted, like you were my entire world. And you were. But now I see the truth more clearly. Those pictures are proof of how deeply I loved you, and how alone I was in loving us.
People used to ask me why I stayed. I would always say the same thing: because you were my best friend. Because there was nothing in the world we couldn’t talk about. But the truth is, you were also the person who hurt me the most. You were the wound I kept pressing my hand against, hoping one day it would finally stop bleeding.
Maybe this is my penance. For falling for a man who wasn’t fully mine. For ignoring every warning sign. For believing that love could somehow change the truth.
I’ve tried to imagine my life without you. And it doesn’t necessarily look happier. Just quieter. Just lonelier. Maybe freer to make better choices, choices that wouldn’t include you. But even now, I don’t know if that freedom would feel worth the emptiness of not having you in my life.
This love has wrecked me in ways I don’t know if I will ever fully recover from. I won’t come out of it the same person.
Maybe one day I’ll settle for something safer. Something calmer. Something convenient and steady. Something that doesn’t tear me apart the way loving you did.
But even then, I know I’ll still remember the version of us I believed in.
What hurts the most is realizing that I never really knew you. Not completely. You gave me pieces of yourself, fragments, glimpses. Enough to keep me hoping. Enough to keep me tethered.
And I called it love because I didn’t know any better.
Maybe there’s someone out there who will love you the way I couldn’t. Someone who won’t have to beg for pieces of you or twist themselves into something smaller just to keep you.
Because I am tired.
Tired of bending myself around your edges.
Tired of holding back parts of you just so I could survive loving you.
Tired of betraying myself every time I chose you over me.
She Was Sea 