I loved you enough to come back and knock on the door. I loved you enough to sit with my decisions for months and question it a thousand times. I loved you enough to reach out, even when the fear of what the silence may say (0+0=0). The truth is, I lever left because I stopped loving you. I left because there was another life coming into this world, and my conscience told me I had to be present. I couldnāt ask a pregnant woman to walk that road alone, I certainly couldnāt give you half of a partner while trying to become the father I believed my child deserved. Maybe I was right. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I will question the decision for the rest of my lifeā¦
What I do know is that it was never made out of a lack of love. I know I hurt you, I was irresponsible with your heart. I broke it, it was me. Those truths belong to me, and I carry them. But Iāve spent enough time trying to decipher songs, signs, memories and what-ifs. I reached out because my heart told me to. I reached out because if there was still a bridge between us, I wanted to walk toward it. Now Iāve gotta make peace for what comes next.
One of the hardest lessons Iāve learned is that love is not always enough. Sometimes two people can love each other deeply and still find themselves standing on opposite sides of a decision that neither one of them wanted to make. Sometimes love cannot heal wounds that existed long before either person arrived. Sometimes love is present, yet life asks more of us than love alone can answer. That realization used to make me angry. Now it mostly just makes me sad. Because I know the loves there. It was real. What we shared was real. The love was real. And maybe thatās why it hurts so much.
One of the things Iāve learned since losing you is how much I value sharing a table with the people I love. I think I always knew the table was sacred. What changed is that I now understand what it feels like when people are fully present there. The people that love me today have taught me that. They taught me that food isnāt just nourishment. Itās deeper than that. Itās conversation. Itās laughter. Itās communication. Itās care. Itās one of the purest ways to say āhey Iām glad youāre hereā. And somewhere along the way I realized that food is one of the purest ways I know how to love. I learned that from you! You cooked for me. Again and again you cooked for me.
Looking back, I see all the ways you showed love that I was too young, too distracted, or too inexperienced to fully understand. Looking back, I realize there were parts of your life I wanted so badly to help carry. Not because I thought i could fix them, but simply because I loved you. There were moments where I wanted to make things lighter, easier or less painful, and I struggled to understand why love alone couldnāt do that.
What Iāve learned from that is that love alone doesnāt always grant us access to every wound. Sometimes the best we can do is stand besides someone, love them as they are, and accept that there are hurts that we cannot heal and burdens we cannot carry for them. I understand with far more compassion than I did then.
The strange thing about grief is that it keeps teaching you lessons long after someone has changed your life. Sometimes we learn to give the very thing we wanted to offer another person,only after the moment has passed. The meal, the comfort, the nourishment. I eventually learned to give those things. Maybe not in the timeline that I wanted. What breaks my heart a little is that I never got to share that part of myself with you. I was too shy, too unsure of myself, and too busy doubting what I had to offer. Life eventually taught me what I was trying to learn all along. That care can be found in the smallest gestures. That food is often less about what is being served and more about who is sitting across from you.
Sometimes when I cook for the people I love now, I think about how much of that understanding began with you. Not because I am still living in the past, but because some of the lessons we carry forward are gifts from the people who helped shape us. The desire I once had to care for you didnāt disappear. It simply grew into the way I care for others. And maybe thatās one of the things grief teaches us. Not how to forget people, but how to let what they gave us become a part of who we are. Sometimes we become the person we wish we had been while the relationship was still alive.
Idk if I ever told you that I learned this from you. But I did. No matter where our story goes from here, there are things I am eternally grateful for. Thank you for every meal, thank you for every conversation, that you for every way you loved me. Thank you for the lessons that stayed long after our chapter ended. I release the need know, I release the need to chase, I release the need to hold on so tight. What is meant for me will make itself present.
Wherever you are, I hope you are loved. I hope you are safe. I hope you are happy. And for the first time in a long time l, I am going to try wish those things for myself too.
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