It's not just you I miss—it's your touch. The smell of your skin, your warmth, the way my chest would soften when I came near you—all of it. Sometimes I want nothing more than to leave everything behind, just once, and stand beside you. I wouldn't say anything, wouldn't ask for anything, just be close. I think that might quiet this restlessness a little.
My tears, my hurt feelings, this agitation—maybe they seemed too much to you sometimes. Maybe you thought I was making things complicated, overthinking. But the truth is, I've kept so much of myself buried for so long. There was so much I never said, things I just carried silently. And when a person carries their own pain quietly for years, they break over small things eventually. From the outside it might look like too much, like I'm overreacting. But inside, so much accumulates. So much collects and settles there.
I loved you so much. So much that sometimes I forgot myself entirely. I could feel how soft I became around you, and I knew it. I would kiss your feet, and it never felt strange to me. It felt like the only way I knew how to love—deeply, with complete openness. There were times you lay with your eyes closed, and I would lean over you quietly, loving you in my own way. I thought you didn't notice. Now I wonder if you did. Maybe you just said nothing.
That silence is what hurts most. When someone understands everything but says nothing, their silence becomes a kind of distance. I never asked you for much. I just wanted you to see, to feel, where I was breaking. When you say you need space, I think, yes, you're right, you do. But not space from me. Space because loving you has left me suffocating inside myself.
I'm exhausted from ignoring myself. From diminishing my own pain. From setting my own needs aside. I've accepted so much, just to keep us from falling apart, just to hold on to what we have. Now I understand—holding on isn't enough. If a person is dying from the inside, if they're slowly becoming less themselves, then the relationship survives but the person inside it doesn't stay the same.
What frightens me most is this: if I really do leave, maybe it won't change much for you. Maybe you'll adjust. But me? I've been surviving on so little from you for so long. Your silence, your distance, your diminishing tenderness. And still I hold on. It's hard to admit, but it's true.
Some nights I wonder—if you truly want nothing more from this, why am I still awake? What am I waiting for? What am I hoping for? If loving someone this much leaves you lonelier with them than without them, how much longer can you stay inside that love?
And yet the truth doesn't change. I still want you. Your scent, your arms around me, that quiet feeling of being near you—it's still here inside me. But alongside this, another truth is becoming clear. You can't love like this, not when one person keeps breaking and the other watches in silence.
Living this way, a person eventually becomes a stranger to themselves.
If I ever truly leave, it won’t be because love has run dry. It will be because loving so much and receiving so little, opening my heart so completely and remaining so utterly alone—these things become unbearable after a time. Because after a certain point, a person doesn’t just want to save the relationship; they want to save themselves.
And I have kept you alive for so long. Now I want to keep myself alive too.