A Map of All the Places We Cried.

I found the map again today. Folded into a notebook I hadn’t touched in years, pressed between pages like a fragile leaf. The paper had yellowed, the ink faded, but the red circles were still there—each one a place we cried.

I don't remember whose idea it was, only that it started with a joke. "We should keep track," you said, wiping your face with your sleeve as we sat on that rainy bench outside the train station. "Make a map. Chart every time we fall apart.”

So we did.


---

First mark: Bench outside the train station.
You were leaving for a semester abroad. I smiled as you walked away, then crumpled the second you turned the corner. It was our first goodbye, and even then, we knew it wouldn’t be the last.

Second: The cafe on 9th and Willow.
You spilled your coffee, and I snapped at you for something trivial. We argued in hushed voices while the barista looked away. You reached for my hand even as tears slipped from your eyes, whispering, "Why does love feel like drowning some days?"

Third: Your bedroom floor.
The night your dad called from the hospital. I held you as you trembled, unable to speak. Your sobs were small and sharp, like you were afraid of taking up too much space even in grief.

Fourth: The parking lot after my brother’s funeral.
I couldn’t breathe. You let me punch the dashboard until my knuckles bled, then kissed each one like they were wounds you could heal. You didn’t say a word. You didn’t have to.


---

Over the years, the map grew. Cities, sidewalks, hotel rooms. Airports and empty streets. The front seat of the car during a thunderstorm. The museum in Chicago where we stood in front of a painting and cried for reasons neither of us could explain.

Some marks were from goodbyes. Others from fear. Some, from laughter that turned into tears. There’s a kind of crying only love can bring—the kind that says “I can’t believe I found you,” and also “I’m terrified of losing you.”

We were both emotional people, raw and tangled. We never pretended to be made of steel. That was what made it work—until it didn’t.

The last mark we made was the park by the harbor.

You said, “We’re not good for each other anymore, are we?”

I said nothing, because you already knew the answer.

You took the pen from my hand and circled the bench where we sat, both of us red-eyed and broken and somehow still holding hands. “One last mark,” you said. “For the record.”


---

And then you left.

No anger, no betrayal. Just a slow, quiet undoing of something that had once felt like forever.

I stopped looking at the map after that.

Until today.


---

As I unfolded it, I traced every red circle with my fingertip. Not with regret—but with recognition. Because here’s the thing about mapping sorrow: it doesn’t only show where things hurt. It shows where we were. Where we tried. Where we cared enough to cry.

That map is our love story, just told in a different language.

And I think, maybe, that’s okay.

Because for every place we cried, there was a moment before the tears.
A hand held.
A promise made.
A silence filled with understanding.
A love so deep it had nowhere else to go but out through our eyes.


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If I could talk to you now, I wouldn’t ask for another chance. I’d just hand you this map and say, “Look. We didn’t fail. We felt.”

And maybe that’s enough.

Maybe it always was.