Ashes in the Wind: The Day I Stopped Waiting

I stood in front of the lake again. Same dock. Same wind tugging at my coat. The water, as always, refused to care.

The dock creaked under me as if it recognized my weight, like an old friend whispering, "You're back." The sun had not yet risen fully, but it painted soft orange strokes across the horizon, hinting at warmth that would never quite reach my skin.

He was supposed to be here with me. But he never was. Not really.

We met during a night of thunder and failed electricity, in a hostel filled with flickering candles and wandering souls. He had that kind of presence that made the whole room feel like it turned to face him. He didn’t smile much, but when he did, it was sharp, deliberate — like a secret you weren’t supposed to know.

And I? I was starving for connection. I mistook mystery for depth, silence for strength.


---

He never told me he loved me. Not with words. But his hands would brush my hair from my eyes while I painted. He bought me a set of watercolors I could never afford. He memorized the exact way I liked my coffee — two sugars, no cream, stirred counter-clockwise.

We told each other stories at 2 a.m., toes touching under blankets, and he promised, “Someday, I’ll take you to Iceland.” He said he had family there. I never asked for proof. I didn’t need it. I believed the fiction because I needed to.

He cried once, in my arms, whispering about something he lost but couldn’t name. That was the night I swore to stay, no matter how bad it got.

That was my mistake.


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He stopped answering texts around the same time he started speaking in riddles. My paintings dried up. My coffee tasted wrong. He came and went like fog, never fully present, never fully gone.

I once asked him, “What are we?” He smiled, and said, “We’re free.”

But I wasn’t free. I was waiting.

Waiting for his attention. Waiting for his honesty. Waiting for him to become real.

Then one day, he disappeared. No message. No goodbye. Just gone. Like a ghost who realized I could finally see through him.


---

For months, I blamed myself. Maybe I asked for too much. Maybe I was too emotional, too intense, too "me." I deleted every picture, then cried when I realized the only one I couldn’t erase was the one in my mind — him looking at me like I mattered.

I stopped painting. My brushes lay dry and broken in a jar on my windowsill. My friends said, “You dodged a bullet.” I nodded, smiled, and went home to cry again.

But one morning, something shifted. I saw a stranger on the street wearing a scarf just like his. My chest tightened — then, nothing. No ache. No pull. Just the simple realization: I don’t miss him anymore.

That night, I picked up a brush.


---

The lake is still here. The silence feels different now — no longer heavy with absence, but light with presence. My own.

I think he loved the way I made him feel, not who I was. I was his mirror — the reflection he wanted to see. But I’m more than that now. I am not a mirror. I am a window, open to possibility.

They say time heals. It doesn’t. But it does reveal.

And this morning, in the gold mist of dawn, I saw myself clearly.

I never really lost him. Because he was never fully there. But I did find something far more important.

Me.


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Now, I paint again. Not because I’m waiting to be seen, but because I see.

I travel. I write. I sit with friends and laugh from the belly. I still cry sometimes, when certain chords in certain songs play. But the tears are clean, not corrosive.

The dock groans as I stand. The wind pushes at my back gently, not harshly. A whisper of the past, but not a pull.

I walk away from the lake. Lighter.

No longer waiting.

No longer wearing a mask.

Just me.

And that’s enough.


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Author's Note: To anyone recovering from invisible grief — the loss of something that was never real — I see you. I know how long it takes to untangle truth from illusion, memory from hope. You will return to yourself, slowly, painfully, beautifully.

And when you do, you won’t just heal.

You’ll begin.