you’re not special

about

Tag: romance

  • a pocket full of grief

    It’s easier to write about love. The thrill of it, the certainty, the way it makes you feel chosen.

    It’s even easier to write about love once it’s over, when time has softened the pain into lessons.

    To write about hurt is different.

    Hurt isn’t poetic. It isn’t neat. It lies heavy on your chest, dull and consuming. Challenging you to make something beautiful out of a feeling that was never gentle to begin with.

    That’s where I’ve been lately.

    Overwhelmed with things I want to say. Full of feelings, I don’t know how to justify on a page, completely lost on how to make it all worth reading.

    Heartbreak is unlike any other emotion.

    It doesn’t move in a straight line. It rises, collapses, heals, then reopens without warning. Growth is neighbor to desperation. Hope is roommates with devastation. It introduces you to pain you didn’t know your body could hold.

    It’s ironic, how heartbreak can never be linear.

    A straight line, a flat line. The absence of all feeling and life, the moment the heart stops speaking entirely.

    Love survives in the moment, grief lives in its waves.

    Once you meet grief, you recognize it forever.

    I think of grief as a rock in your pocket. At first, the weight of it seems unbearable. Every step is a reminder that it’s there. Over time, it grows lighter, or maybe you simply grow stronger. It never leaves, the rock; you just learn how to move on with it.

    Some days you forget it’s there.

    Other days, it feels heavier than it ever has.

    We all carry rocks. Romantic love isn’t the only way loss enters life, but every human who breathes knows grief. It’s unavoidable.

    And yet, every time a rock is added, we fall again.

    Defeat becomes familiar. Healing feels temporary, Progress feels fragile.

    Grief looks different for everyone.

    In my life, it looks like mourning a love that is still alive.

    The person I grieve wakes up under the same sky and moves forward, just now, without me.

    Grieving someone who still exists is its own kind of cruelty.

    Right now, my grief looks like emptiness.

    Both emotionally and physically.

    Heartbreak has its way of stripping you to skin and bones.

    You take up less space without intention.

    Your clothes fall differently, your reflection startles you. There is an emptiness that settles in. You can’t tell where from, your chest, stomach, or life, but it’s made itself comfortable in the hollowness of you.

    People question with care; you don’t have the language to explain the lack of restraint. It was a loss. Weight has shifted elsewhere, and love has collapsed inward.

    I didn’t choose this

    Grief found me.

    Sometimes I wonder if it would have been easier to never have met you at all.

    Love was never about safety. As humans, we risk our lives for love. We give our bodies, our certainty, our sense of self. We open ourselves up to something we know might not stay.

    And even now, I don’t wish I had never loved you.

    I wish it hadn’t taken parts of me to exist.

    But loving, when it nearly took everything out of me, remains the most wonderful gift I’ve ever given.

    That moment, when you sit with nothing left to give. Truly, you sit after you’ve explained, begged, waited, forgiven, cried, and through it all, loved. You realize there was nothing more you could have done when you reached the flatline of heartbreak. That moment deserves mourning.

    Losing someone who once knew you completely

    Losing someone who once spoke your love fluently, then lost the language

    That is grief.

    You don’t get to run from it

    You have to feel the rocks as you stand, and keep going anyway.

    That’s the risk of love. You risk your life, your joy, and your peace.

    All for a feeling

    A feeling we keep getting back up to find.

    I will get up, and there will be love again

    This time, I will find a love that is recognized, not just received.

    Someone will meet me and think that love is me. Someone will understand that my love is not just what I offer, it is entirely who I am

    Someone will meet me, and all the ways of me will suddenly feel like home. Someone will love me with all the rocks in my pockets.

    And I will love them the same way. Fully and honestly. Carrying all that we carry.

    That is when I’ll finally understand,

    You were not special for loving me

  • one year later

    When I saw you, it had been a year since the last.

    Maybe a little more

    We locked eyes, longer than any other glance made that day

    To everyone, we were two strangers. To each other, that glance was a memory of who we once knew.

    Hurt and expired love. For me at least.

    I saw you

    one year later

    In the grand scheme of things, that’s not too long of a time. But, I’m a different person now. I’m sure you are too.

    Two people, strangers now, who’s eyes told the story of two people, once together.

    His eagerness and her hurt.

    You sound different. You’ve lost your accent a little. Your “r’s” roll of a little smoother now.

    Your curls are looser and your hair seems darker.

    Your eyes though, they haven’t changed.

    While, I don’t know who looks into them or who they light up at. Your eyes locking with mine, for the first time in a year, make my heart beat so loud I have to focus to hear anything over it.

    Your eyes, they bring back emotions I once prayed so hard to get over.

    You go on, as do I. Playing the role of strangers, what others are expecting of us.

    You set your phone down and curiosity hits me. I wonder what your lock screen is, and all the other things that had to have changed.

    The necklace you carefully adjust, is it the same you wore with me?

    I catch myself and try to carry on.

    I think of all of the ways I have changed over the year.

    To you, my hair is dark, longer and I speak a little less.

    I still have so much to say, just no longer to you.

    To you, I dress differently, but haven’t changed my love for New York and hats.

    I wonder what else you notice, if anything at all.

    I type away on a phone that has never been used to reach out to you.

    My lock screen is of my dog, you’ve never met her.

    My eyes though, they haven’t changed.

    Despite my efforts to outgrow thoughts of you and move past every “what if”

    My eyes haven’t changed.

    They do their best to avoid yours and each time they fail they reflect the hurt of almost.

    I almost loved you

    You almost loved me

    We almost worked

    I wonder what goes through your mind when you look into me.

    One year later, I wonder if you regret things

    One year later, I wonder if your heart reacts to its eyes meeting mine.

    Is there familiarity?

    Easily and I’m sure accurately, you don’t feel what I do. All that I do.

    Something I was never able to understand. Even one year later, looking into your eyes with so much unsaid between them.

    The reintroduction of your blue eyes creates the need for recovery. Days and weeks I will relive, rethink, and analyze this moment.

    Looking into your eyes again,

    one year later.

  • oat milk latte

    I miss you sometimes

    A feeling so heavy it would weigh down my days.

    For a while, I couldn’t help but check if you’d viewed my socials, and it was daily that I imagined speaking with you.

    But in time, something has changed. 

    In these imaginary conversations, I’m the one telling you to leave. I’m the one asking you to let me go. I’m the one moving on.

    Slowly but surely, I’ve started choosing myself over you.

    My mornings no longer start with me reaching for my phone, desperate for a text that won’t come.

    Instead, I snooze my alarm. Once, twice, even three times. Finally, I grunt my way out of bed, wash my face, and think about my morning coffee.

    No thoughts of you.

    No what could have been about us.

    Just me, standing in the kitchen, deciding between oat and almond milk.

    Now, the music I play is for me, not songs that remind me of you.

    My camera roll is filled with moments I cherish, not photos strategically taken to catch your attention.

    I make conversation with strangers at the library, embracing the little reminders that there’s so much more to life than you.

    Every day, the thought of you fades a little more, replaced by something new. Still, there are moments.

    A knot tightens in my chest when your name comes up, and the scent of your cologne stops me in my tracks.

    But I choose, again and again, to push those thoughts away. Sometimes, I wish to sit with the thought of us a little longer, but I don’t.

    I indeed miss you. But I miss me more.

    And it’s time to find the version of me that I love, and I’m proud of.

    Eager for the phase of my life where I get to do what I want, be who I want, and go where I want.

    I’ve stopped rehashing every interaction we had, wishing I’d said or done something differently.

    Instead, I do things differently. I do things for me. 

    I dress up for the grocery store, I dance in the rain, I talk to strangers, and I savor the joy of alone time.

    I dream about the places I’ll visit, the goals I’ll chase, and the people I’ll meet along the way. These dreams are my future, and they excite me in ways you never could.

    I used to think you were holding me back. But the truth is, it was always me.

    The moment I saw that photo of you with someone new, a beautiful girl with a warm smile, my breath was stolen from me. I was angry, confused, and heartbroken in ways I didn’t know I could be.

    But that moment quickly became the turning point.

    The hurt didn’t last as long as I thought it would.

    One day, I woke up and didn’t check if you had reached out.

    Instead, I snoozed my alarm, washed my face, and thought to myself:

    Today, an oat milk latte sounds pretty good