Blue.

But hope has a cruel tenderness to it, too. It knows how to wound without ever raising its voice. It hurts in the quiet moments, in the spaces between what you prayed for and what you were given, in the long, hollow silence after something you loved slips through your fingers. Every time it moves farther away, every time the thing you built your soul around dissolves into almosts and maybes and not-quites, it leaves a bruise no one can see. The spark that once warmed your chest can fade so slowly you do not notice the cold until it has already settled deep inside you, until you are standing in the ruins of your own wanting, trying to remember what it felt like to trust the light. And the worst part is that hope never leaves all at once it lingers, it haunts, it asks you to keep waiting even when waiting has become its own kind of grief.

If the whole red string theory is real, then the universe will find a way to bring us back together one day.

If the “rule of three” means anything, maybe us missing each other at that one time and finding each other now just means this isn’t our time yet. that next time, everything will finally fall into place.

Hi Love,

Wipe thoes tears and smile, you will end up with wrinkles and I can’t wipe away the tears right now.

I love you. I know things didn't end the way either of us had hoped. You never wanted to hurt me, none of what happened was something you chose. You can’t help how you feel, and the way that things played out.

I love you in spite of all of it. I love your smile, your laugh, the particular way your mind works. The way you throw yourself into something new when it catches you, the way you try to keep what you're feeling off your face, even though you never could, not with me.

I love the memories we made together. The first time we met, when you sprinted across the car park and into my arms and I kissed you like I had been waiting my whole life to. Sneaking into your house after your parents left, disabling the ring camera, slipping around to the back door. Meeting your family, your dad approving and asking if I wanted to stay the night. Meeting your grandfather, who barely looked up from the television but still shook my hand and told you that you looked lovely. Scotland for New Year's, surrounded by your family. Every anniversary, bottomless brunch, the two of us acting like it was still the first date.

What I'm most grateful for is that you were never just a partner to me. You were my closest friend. The one person I could say anything to. You healed things in me I hadn't even known were broken, and I will carry that with me always. If I had the chance to do it all over again? I would do it in a heartbeat.

If this is goodbye, I need you to know: none of this is your fault. It never could have been. I want you to live really live as yourself. Free and happy.

I love you.

Always and forever.

God, I want to.

I want to look at what she did and feel anger instead of love. I want to tear her from my heart and leave her among the ruins she created. It would be so much easier if I hated her.

But I don’t.

I adore her.

I would have burned the world to keep her warm. I would have carried every burden she ever placed upon her shoulders if it meant seeing her smile one more time. And maybe that’s the cruelest part of all. She shattered my heart, and somehow it still beats for her.

She isn’t really mine anymore.

Maybe she hasn’t been for a long time.

She broke us the moment she wanted someone else. Something else. The moment she looked beyond what we had and wondered if there was more waiting for her somewhere else. I don’t care if it was just a message. I don’t care if it was photos. I don’t care if it happened once or a hundred times, if it lasted days or months, if there was one person or many.

The details don’t matter.

The betrayal does.

Because she did the one thing she promised she would never do.

And I still remember the moment I found out. I can still see the outline of those messages beneath the reflection in the mirror. I can still feel my stomach drop. I can still hear the silence that followed as my heart turned to dust inside my chest.

There was no dramatic shattering.

Just the awful realization that the person I trusted most had chosen to wound me in the one way she swore she never would.

The worst part is that I still love her.

Not despite what happened.

After it.

Knowing what I know now, carrying every image, every doubt, every sleepless night, I still find myself reaching for her in the dark.

And maybe that’s what is breaking me. Not what she did. Not the messages. Not the lies.

The fact that I still look at her and see home.

Even when home no longer feels safe.

I don’t want to wonder who she’s talking to every time her phone lights up. I don’t want my heart to race when she turns the screen away. I don’t want to question whether she’s giving pieces of herself to someone else while I sit here trying to hold together the pieces she left behind.

Love shouldn’t feel like surveillance.

Trust shouldn’t feel like gambling.

And yet here I am, loving someone who no longer loves me the way I love her.

Still hoping. Still waiting.

Still wishing that somehow I could be enough for the person who made me feel like I never was.

And I know that’s selfish. I know it is.

Because part of me still wants to kiss you, not to fix any of this, but because some desperate part of my heart hopes you’ll remember. Remember the way I used to make you smile. Remember the butterflies. Remember the way you would look at me when love was still easy and neither of us had learned how much damage a heart could hold.

I want to hold your hand and wonder if it still feels like home.

I want my touch to remind you of everything we had. The quiet moments. The inside jokes. The nights spent tangled together, talking about futures that now feel like ghosts. I want you to remember that I learned every piece of you. The way your eyes softened when you were tired. The way your laugh changed when it was real. The little things nobody else noticed.

I want you to remember what it felt like to be loved by me.

Not because I think it would change your mind. Not because I think it would make you stay.

But because I am terrified that one day you’ll forget.

Forget the way I looked at you like you were the best thing that had ever happened to me.

Forget the way I would have chosen you over and over again.

Forget the way my heart belonged to you so completely that even now, after everything, I cannot convince it to let go.

Maybe that’s the tragedy of it all.

You broke my heart.

You shattered my trust.

You became the source of the very pain you once promised to protect me from.

And somehow, despite all of that, when I close my eyes at night, it is still your voice I want to hear.

Your arms I want around me.

Your love I keep searching for in places where it no longer exists.

I think that’s what hurts the most.

Not that you hurt me.

Not that you chose someone else.

Not even that I lost you.

But beneath it all, there is a volcano beneath my heart, always rumbling, always trying to protect me. No matter how much I want to, I cannot silence the part of me that no longer knows how to trust. Deep down, I know things are not the same, and perhaps they never will be.

I lost the other half of myself, and no matter how desperately I try to tape the pieces back together, they refuse to hold. Trust cannot be forced into existence. It has to be rebuilt slowly and carefully. I need you to show me that I can believe in you again. I need to feel that you want me, not just the comfort I bring, not just the safety of knowing I will stay.

The panic attacks remind me that none of this is a dream. The tightness in my chest, the struggle for breath, the dizzy flood of thoughts whispering that I am not enough, that I am not what you truly want.

I want every inch of you to touch, hold, kiss and adore

I love the days I can look at you and see the stars in your eyes that I would burn the world down for.

I love the days where I feel like this can work, we can mend and the world will feel okay again.

But I proud of the woman she has become, proud of everything she is. How beautiful her personality has become and how she’s embracing herself.

However, I wish I could be selfish and keep her as mine.

It’s okay to miss them. It’s okay to want them. It’s okay to go back, and it’s okay if you just need to be alone and want them from a distance to protect yourself.

The one you need, the one you can depend on.

But also the one you want to hold, kiss and cuddle with, the one you look forward to messaging every day, and the one you want to speak to when your day is bad and when it’s good.