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I flip through our pictures

and the memories rush back

like a tide I forgot how strong it was.

 

Some make me smile

a quiet, aching smile

the kind that knows joy once lived here

even if it couldn’t stay.

 

Our first trip together

felt magical, unreal,

like the world had opened just for us.

And somewhere between laughter and hotel sheets

we had our first fight

small, maybe, at the time

but looking back

it feels like the first crack in the glass.

 

Photo by photo,

I can see it now:

where I was gripping myself tightly,

trying to stay grounded,

trying to stay me

for him.

How heavy that became.

How tired I was.

That first fight was my breaking point,

even if I didn’t name it then.

And as the images keep turning,

another truth settles in—slow, unwelcome, real:

while I was draining myself to survive us,

I was draining him too.

 

He hurt me in ways that still sting,

ways that changed me.

But I see now

that harm doesn’t always arrive all at once

sometimes it seeps in,

quiet, gradual, mutual.

And suddenly I’m holding everything at once:

sadness,

guilt,

shame,

longing,

anger

a thousand emotions

crowding the same small space in my chest.

Now I sit empty,

not because nothing mattered,

but because so much did.

Because love lived here

and so did loss.

Because we both broke,

trying to hold on.

This is my first Christmas

without your name wrapped around mine,

without your voice

calling me Babygirl

like it was a promise and not a season.

 

The tree is up,

but something in me is bare.

Lights blink on and off,

practicing joy

I haven’t agreed to yet.

 

Last year,

I was counting ornaments

while you were counting lies.

I didn’t know it then

how December had already chosen

to break me later.

 

You were warm with me,

gentle, familiar, convincing.

And somewhere between carols and kisses,

you were learning someone else’s laugh,

planting seeds in a month

meant for devotion.

 

I replay it now

how real it felt.

How safe I was allowed to believe.

How I held your words

like they couldn’t expire.

 

This year,

I unwrap memories instead of gifts.

Some still smell like you.

Some finally smell like truth.

 

I don’t miss the man you became.

I miss the version of you

I thought was choosing me

when he was already leaving.

 

Still,

I am here.

Breathing through the ache.

Learning that endings don’t cancel

the love I gave honestly.

 

If Christmas is about birth,

then let this be mine.

Not into joy yet

but into clarity.

Into a quieter kind of peace.

 

And maybe that’s enough

for now.

 

 

I don’t talk about you much anymore.

Not because it doesn’t matter

but because saying your name

feels like reopening a room

I finally learned how to walk past.

 

Some nights I miss the version of myself

who thought love was a place you could live in.

She made space for everything.

She bent.

She stayed.

 

Now I measure my words.

I leave first.

I don’t let silence grow teeth.

 

I notice how my body learned new habits

how my shoulders stay tense

even when nothing is wrong,

how I sleep lighter,

like peace might leave if I blink too long.

 

I don’t hate you.

That surprises people.

What I feel is more complicated than anger.

It’s grief without a funeral.

Loss without permission to mourn.

 

I carry you in the things I don’t reach for anymore.

In how I pause before trusting warmth.

In how I double-check doors that were never locked.

 

Some days I feel strong.

Other days I feel hollow.

Both are true.

Both are mine.

 

I’m not waiting for you to come back.

I’m waiting for myself

to stop looking over my shoulder

for a past that no longer needs me.

 

And when that happens

when my heart stops bracing for impact

I won’t call it healing.

 

I’ll call it

finally exhaling.

I didn’t need fixing.

I needed someone who understood

that loving me meant standing in a storm

without asking the rain to be quieter.

 

My mind is not gentle.

It splits.

It spirals.

It begs and bites and burns all at once.

I told you that.

You nodded

but you never learned how to stay.

 

You loved me in errands.

In tasks.

In showing up when things were calm enough to manage.

And I tried to call that safety.

 

But when the demons came

when my chest was a war zone

and my thoughts turned feral

you stepped back.

 

I needed arms, not answers.

Pressure, not solutions.

Someone who understood that sometimes

holding me meant getting hurt too.

 

Because loving me was never clean.

 

I am the girl who cries quietly

so she doesn’t scare the person she loves.

The girl who fights her own brain

while pretending she’s fine

because she learned early

that need makes people leave.

 

A Daddy doesn’t turn away.

A Daddy doesn’t say this is too much

when his little one is drowning.

A Daddy knows

that protection sometimes means standing still

while chaos claws at both of you.

 

You wanted devotion without the cost.

Obedience without the aftermath.

My softness

And not my survival.

 

And that is where you failed me.

 

I loved you with everything I had.

But love is not acts of service

when someone is unraveling on the floor.

Love is staying.

Even when it hurts.

Especially when it hurts.

 

I didn’t need you to save me.

 

I needed you

to hold me

while I fought to save myself.

 

And you let me cry

where you couldn’t hear it.

I saw my name erased in real time.

That collar—

cold metal I once warmed with my breath—

wasn’t just a thing.

It was a promise

locked around my throat

with rituals and rules

and whispered mine

said like a prayer.

That ring—

the future you swore was waiting—

wasn’t jewelry.

It was the life I rehearsed in my body,

the wife I practiced becoming,

the soft obedience I gave

because you said it meant forever.

And now it’s listed.

Advertised.

Displayed like a used altar piece.

One month.

Thirty fucking days.

Do you know what that means?

It means I wasn’t replaced—

I was liquidated.

 

What we built didn’t end.

It was sold.

I stayed faithful to the ghost of you

while you dressed another woman

in my symbols,

my language,

my devotion.

 

She wears the shape of my love

without knowing the cost.

And I—

I stood there breathing

while something holy inside me

collapsed.

 

My soul didn’t scream.

It didn’t fight.

It just went quiet.

Like an animal that realizes

the door was never locked—

it was staged.

You didn’t just cheat.

You rewrote history

before the ink on my grief was dry.

 

You called me wife.

You called me chosen.

You called me sanctuary.

 

Then you proved I was

inventory.

But hear this—

because this is the part you don’t get to keep:

I was never owned

because I was replaceable.

I was owned because I consented.

Because I loved with intention,

with structure,

with trust so deep

it became ritual.

 

And that kind of devotion

doesn’t disappear

just because you cheapened it.

You can give away the collar.

You can slide the ring onto another hand.

You can cosplay permanence

with someone new.

But you will never again have

the girl who believed you

before the fracture.

 

And I will never again

be that girl.

I survived the moment

my future showed up

without me in it.

 

And if my soul died that day—

then good.

 

Because what comes back

won’t kneel so easily

for someone who sells sacred things

like they were nothing.