Muskan

In the beginning, every spare second belongs to the other person. Every story is the first person you want to tell. Every notification feels exciting because it might be them. And then, so slowly you barely notice it happening, life grows around the relationship instead of inside it.

I know that is how it is supposed to be. Love should not ask someone to make you their entire world. It should leave room for careers, friends, hobbies, ordinary days. I know that.

What I did not expect was how lonely that lesson would feel.

So I stopped asking. I stopped asking you to call. Stopped asking you to make time. Not because I stopped wanting those things, but because I never wanted love to become another obligation on your to do list. I wanted you to choose me, not schedule me.

And maybe that is the saddest part. You never said no. You just stopped saying, “I’ll make it happen.” You agreed with every hope I had, but somehow I was always the one who had to remind you.

So I am learning to need you less. Not because I want to. Because I have to.

I watched someone I cared about have his heart shattered piece by piece. I watched him search my face for the truth he was too afraid to find. And when he finally asked me, I chose honesty over loyalty. I lost my best friend that day, but I convinced myself it was worth it. I told myself that some losses are the price of protecting someone else’s heart.

Years passed. He healed. He found someone kind. Someone whose heart looked far too gentle for this world. And I remember thinking, finally. Finally, the story had found its happy ending.

Then today I learned he had become the same person who once destroyed him.

I cannot explain why it hurts so much. Maybe because I did not just lose faith in him. I lost faith in the idea that pain makes us kinder. I always believed that if someone knew what it felt like to be betrayed, they would spend the rest of their life making sure nobody else ever had to feel that way.

But maybe that is not how people work.

Maybe broken hearts do not always create gentle hands.

But if fate is unkind, if one day your hand slips from mine before mine slips from yours, then promise me you will know this. There is no version of existence where I do not find my way back to you. A thousand lifetimes. A thousand different skies. A thousand names, faces, and worlds. I would still look at you with the strange certainty of coming home.

You have never simply been someone I loved. You became the place my heart returned to after every joy, every fear, every ordinary day. I do not need to be unforgettable to the world. I do not need to belong to everyone. I only ever wanted to belong to you.

The things I asked for were never big enough to matter. Which is exactly why they mattered. Love lives in the unnecessary. In the things no one had to do.

I wanted to know that, every once in a while, you would choose the inconvenience simply because it was me.

Now I ask once.

But somehow, in between them, there are a hundred moments that make me question whether I matter at all.

So my heart never knows where to live. It cannot leave because it has been loved too deeply. It cannot rest because it has been hurt too often. Every time I think, “There is no way someone who loves me this much would make me feel this unwanted,” you prove me wrong in one direction or the other.

But that is not how the world works.

Some people carry their pain so carefully that they never let another soul touch it. Others hand it to the next person without even realizing they have become the thing they once prayed to survive.

It followed me everywhere after that. Sat across from me at dinner. Curled up beside me when I slept. Waited patiently at the edge of every happy moment, as if it knew I would eventually notice it again. Some days it felt new enough to frighten me. Other days it felt ancient, like something I had been carrying long before I had words for it.

And maybe that is why I keep reaching for you. Not because I am lonely, but because everything feels softer when you are close. The future, which once felt so large and uncertain, suddenly shrinks to something simple. Your hand in mine. Your head resting against my shoulder. The feeling that if you are here, then whatever comes next cannot be all that frightening.

I think it is a room. One that echoes because someone left, because something never happened, because a younger version of you is still sitting inside it waiting to be chosen. And no matter how much love you pour into that room, it will always sound a little empty until you stop asking it to become something it was never meant to be.