Why I Left Without Saying Goodbye

I didn’t leave because I stopped loving her.

I left because I loved her too much to stay.

That sounds like a contradiction, I know.

But not all love is made for forever. Some is too sharp, too heavy. Like wearing someone else's skin and calling it your own.

---

We met the way people do in quiet, forgettable places.

A bookstore on a rainy evening. She was laughing at something her friend said. I wasn’t supposed to look. I did anyway.

She noticed.

“Do you always stare at strangers?” she asked.

“Only the ones who feel like déjà vu,” I replied.

That was the first lie.

Not because it wasn’t charming, but because I didn’t believe in déjà vu.

Not until her.

---

She made me feel like I had known her in another lifetime.

We talked about everything — books, broken childhoods, the color of loneliness, the fear of being like our parents.

And we shared silence like it was sacred.

---

But I was cracked.

Not the romantic kind of broken people write poems about.

I was the kind of broken that leaks — quietly, constantly — and eventually floods everyone near you.

She didn’t see it at first.

No one ever does.

---

She used to bring me little things:

Books with underlined quotes. Coffee with the sugar already stirred. Letters I never opened in front of her.

Once she said,

> “You never really arrive when you're with me. You're always halfway somewhere else.”

She wasn’t wrong.

---

The truth is, I was scared.

Of how much she could see me.

Of how much I couldn’t offer in return.

I wasn’t ready for someone who remembered the way I took my tea and the exact pitch of my laughter.

I had loved before — but never like this.

Never someone who made my excuses sound childish just by existing.

---

One night, we sat in her apartment, wrapped in a blanket on the floor.

She leaned her head against my chest and whispered,

> “Just promise you won’t disappear.”

I didn’t reply.

She laughed. “See? You’re already halfway gone.”

---

That was the night I knew.

I couldn’t promise her permanence when I didn’t even believe in my own.

---

The day I left, I did everything slowly.

Like time would stretch for me.

I folded the sweater she loved seeing me in.

Left the tea mug she bought me — still warm.

Put her favorite playlist on loop and placed a note beside it.

Not a goodbye note.

Just:

> “You deserve someone who doesn’t flinch when you love them.”

Then I left the keys on the counter and shut the door without a sound.

---

I didn’t go far.

Just to a town two hours away. Got a job fixing old furniture.

People didn’t ask questions. I didn’t give answers.

---

She tried calling.

For a week.

Then she stopped.

I imagined her deleting my number.

Imagined her crying — not the messy sobs, but the quiet, tired kind where your eyes burn but no tears come.

---

I never opened the letters she wrote later.

Not because I didn’t care.

Because I cared so much, reading her pain would have wrecked me — and I was already barely holding on.

---

A year passed.

Then two.

I heard she moved to another city. Started painting again. Fell in love with someone steady.

Not someone exciting.

Someone safe.

I was happy for her.

Even if my hands still remembered the shape of her waist.

Even if every bookstore still reminded me of her laugh.

---

Sometimes, love means stepping away before you ruin what’s good.

---

One rainy day — exactly three years after I left — I walked into a bookstore in a city I was passing through.

There she was.

Hair shorter. Smile smaller.

Her eyes met mine.

Neither of us spoke.

I nodded.

She nodded back.

She didn’t smile.

But she didn’t cry either.

And maybe that was enough.

---

She left before I did this time.

Didn’t say goodbye.

And I understood.

---

We were never meant to last forever.

But for a while, we were everything.

And sometimes, that's all love has to be.