To The Stranger Who Still Owns My Heart

Hurt doesn’t even begin to cover it. When I think of you, it feels as though the entire dictionary fails me—there isn’t a word in any language that can capture the weight of what I feel. Hate? No, I can’t say I hate you. Hate is too strong, too final, too sharp. And yet, I wish I could feel that way. It would be easier, wouldn’t it? It would be cleaner. But this…this is messy, tangled, and impossible to define.

How does someone go from making my heart race with joy, from laughter so deep it filled the cracks in my soul, to this? To this numbness that’s so heavy I have to remind myself to check if my heart still beats. For a while, I thought I might actually die of a broken heart. Broken Heart Syndrome. It sounds dramatic, doesn’t it? But it felt real, as if the pain in my chest was trying to fold in on itself.

And the worst part? It felt like you were okay with that. Like you could see me falling apart and it was okay with you. Maybe you couldn't. Who knows? You never talked to me about it.

You held every fragile piece of me in your hands. I handed them over so willingly, not realizing what it meant. I let you have the power to shatter me because I believed in you. I believed in us. I saw what we could be, what we might become if only I could fix the parts of you that no one else even noticed were broken.

I understood why you couldn’t give yourself fully in return. I really did. You were carrying so much pain, and no one else could see it. But I could. I thought that meant something. I thought it made me special.

So I stayed. I stayed even as I unraveled. I stayed as I lost sleep, lost connections, lost myself. None of it mattered as long as you were okay. I thought it was my job to put you back together, to be your safe place, to hold your secrets when you couldn’t carry them anymore. You trusted me, and I thought that was enough. I poured all of myself into you, even as I crumbled into nothingness.

But what hurts most—what I can’t seem to forgive myself for—is that if you called me today, I’d come back. Without hesitation, without a second thought, I would walk back into the flames that burned me before. It doesn’t matter how many times I tell myself it’s unhealthy. It doesn’t matter that I know nothing would change.

Still, I ache for your voice. I crave the way your presence felt like air after drowning. I long for the way my body felt whole, as though just being near you could knit my broken pieces back together. You were the only place where I could finally take a breath, and now that you’re gone, I’m left gasping for something that no longer exists.

What have you done to me, stranger? And why does it hurt so good? Why does my heart refuse to let go of someone who was never fully mine?

I wish I could hate you. I wish I could blame you. But the truth is, I can’t. I can only blame myself for giving too much, for hoping too hard, for holding on when I should have let go.

And yet, if I had to do it all over again, I probably wouldn’t change a thing. Because even in the pain, there was beauty. Even in the heartbreak, there was something worth holding onto.

If you relate to this story, I see you. I hear you. I love you.

Love, C