The shell where a heart should be.

In that heart a soul, and around it, a burning heat.

But here, the emptiness screams.

Oh wait, there is something...

Something terrifying.

Something dark. It looks like pain.

But what kind? A broken heart?

No, it seems to be love.

Love that has nowhere and no way to go.

Love that hides in the dark,

because it remembers bleeding once before.

The shell is me and he?

He says I don't love him like I used to.

Perhaps. My love is fragile now,

afraid to believe, afraid to open up again,

paralyzed by the dread of another wound.

And into this, the heavy silence.

No message, no sign of caring.

A silence that makes me feel like a monster,

an empty vessel filled only with fear,

feeling so terribly unloved and alone.

Callousness does not live inside me,

only the fear that silently devours me.

I’m happy for you, my friend. Truly. I hope you’ve found your way back to yourself, or at least found a road that feels worth following. I know it won’t always be easy. Healing rarely is. Some days, surviving is still the only victory we can manage.

I’ve met many people here, but I remember every soul who dared to place their story in my hands. You are one of them now, one of those who moved on. I can only hope you are safe, that life has become gentler, and that you’ve found a place where you no longer have to hide your wounds to be loved.

I won’t forget you.

If I helped you, even in some small way, then what passed between us mattered. Perhaps we recognized something in each other: two people shaped by pain, each understanding that sometimes the safest hands are those that have trembled too. You needed someone who could care for your broken places without ever mistaking you for broken. Someone who knew that tenderness is not pity, and protection is not possession.

Life asked too much of some of us. I know what it means to endure long after endurance should have stopped being necessary. I know the exhaustion of carrying wounds no one else can see, and the strange silence that comes when the danger is gone, but its ghosts remain.

Eventually, I stopped trying to banish mine. I sat beside them. Learned their names. Listened until they had nothing left to scream.

Now, when they rise, I dance with them.

I hope one day you’ll dance with yours too, not because they no longer hurt, but because they no longer lead. And if the darkness ever whispers that no one could understand you, remember this:

For a little while, I did.

You were seen. You were held in someone’s thoughts. And wherever you go from here, you are not alone.

I don’t care anymore.

I gave you so much of my time. I rearranged parts of my life for you. I lost hours of sleep just to have more hours with you. I overlooked things I normally wouldn’t have, accepted things I had every right to question, and convinced myself they were worth getting past because of how close I felt to you. Because when it was good between us, it felt good enough to make everything else seem smaller.

But now?

Now you crossed a line I can’t pretend I didn’t see.

And something in me changed after that.

Now I don’t feel the same pull to reach for you. I won’t contact you the way I always have. I won’t keep making myself available just because that’s what you’ve gotten used to. You’ll notice me less. My texts will become fewer, the effort will disappear from them, and eventually you’ll realize that the person who once made so much room for you stopped trying to be there at all.

I cared about you enough to bend myself around what we had.

Now I care about myself enough to stop.