I stayed anyway

By the time he realised she was gone, it had already happened.

The house felt colder than usual. Not the kind of cold that comes from weather, but the quiet kind that settles into walls after something has left them.

At first he didn’t notice.

He moved through the rooms the way he always did, distracted, assuming everything would still be where it belonged. The silence didn’t trouble him. It rarely did.

It was only later that the emptiness began to reveal itself. A space where something used to be. A room that felt slightly wrong.

On the table sat the worn notebook.

He had seen her bent over it countless times. Writing, closing it when he walked in, keeping whatever lived inside those pages to herself.

He picked it up.

He opened it.

And he began to read.

This is probably the most honest thing I will ever say to you, and I hope you at least read it, even though I know how much I hate writing messages this long that so often never get read.

I don’t think you ever really understood the extent of what I felt for you. How devastated I felt every time we separated or every time we fought. I just wanted you to see me, to fight for me the way I felt you fought for other things.

I would have done anything for you. I would have married you. I would have done everything in my power to build a life with you.

I remember imagining very specific things with you. A very simple wedding, almost wild, on a beach somewhere. Just you and me. I remember once outside that bar with Christian when we saw that little boy playing football and you said something about imagining a red haired child with darker skin. And I imagined him. I imagined a whole life.

I had never imagined my future with someone so clearly before. And I think when you love like that, it becomes something enormous. Beautiful and destructive at the same time. It is passion, intensity, something that spreads like wildfire until it consumes everything.

But there is also something I have to say that I know you don’t like hearing. I am not saying it to attack you, only because it is true. You put me through hell. Maybe you do not see it that way, maybe you did not experience it the same way, but for me it was exactly that.

When you love someone the way I loved you, everything becomes visceral. It is not logical anymore. I saw a future with you, a whole life with you, and at the same time your past felt like it was tearing that future apart right in front of me.

Maybe it was not the same for you, and that is understandable. But I will probably never be able to explain how deeply I felt everything. The lies, the doubts, everything that was happening. I felt it in a very physical way.

I had nightmares about you cheating on me, about you going back to her, about you changing your mind from one day to the next. It was constant anxiety. It was toxic, I know. I can recognise that now.

And I know you had your own reasons and your own circumstances. But that never made it hurt any less.

I also knew that I was walking into a situation that could destroy me.

And I stayed anyway.

Part of me hates that you put me through something like that. But another part of me hates that I stayed, that I allowed it to happen, that I was so deep inside it that I did not even know how to leave anymore.

It felt like the only thing I could do was remain there, watching things hurt me again and again. And it felt deeply unfair.

I don’t know if you can understand that. Or at least feel some empathy for it.

Because something like that changes you. I think it even changes the chemistry of your brain. Honestly, I don’t think I will ever love someone like that again. I don’t think I can. I am not even sure how anymore.

When we broke up it felt like someone had died. As if I had died too. I cried until I no longer recognised myself outside that grief.

I am not telling you this to make you feel bad or to expect an answer. I don’t even know if there is one. I just think that if someone had loved me like that, I would want to know.

When you came back it was very easy to fall back into our old dynamic. It felt comfortable and at the same time absolutely terrifying. Because the truth is there is nothing that scares me more than being that devastated again.

That is why I needed things to be different. I needed to see it, I needed to believe it. For me love has always been something very big, almost fantastical. And maybe that is why I held it to an impossible standard.

But there is something you need to understand. It hurts in my bones to think that maybe you feel nothing for me.

It is not that I believe you feel nothing. It is that I needed something solid. Something I could see and believe.

When I say you have power over me, it is not an exaggeration. It is a power I do not even have over myself. One word from you, one look of contempt, can sink me completely.

It feels as if a part of my soul stayed with you.

And when you are not careful with that, I feel it multiplied inside me.

I know that for my own mental health I need to learn not to feel everything with such intensity, but I do not know how to do that yet.

Because I also know that I will always love you in some way. Maybe in a complicated, abstract, even slightly toxic way. But real.

And being aware of that is frightening. It is frightening to know that a part of you belongs to someone who may not always be gentle with it.

I am not telling you this to argue or to convince you of anything.

It is simply the truth.

And in the end the only things we really have are our truths.

These are mine.

He finished reading and sat there for a long time.

The house was still silent.

Slowly, he turned back to the first page.

The words felt different now.

He closed the notebook.

Then, after a moment, he opened it again.

And he began to read.