My (former) boyfriend, K.
There are loves that don't end when people are separated.
They only end when the heart stops remembering.
Mine hasn't stopped for a day.
I haven't stopped thinking about you a single day since we broke up. Not once. Even though a month and a half has passed, the pain hasn't faded; on the contrary, it has learned to stay inside me. There are days that take my breath away and nights that wake me up from sleep with memories I didn't ask for.
We were not just two people who fell in love. We built a life. We became a family in a foreign country. We became a refuge for each other. We shared fatigue, fear, joy, dreams, endless memories, while our silence today speaks louder than words.
We weren't perfect. We fought. We got hurt. We saw each other's darkest sides. But still, we stuck with it. Because our love wasn't naive. It was grown. It was a choice. It was an effort.
And that is precisely what makes the pain so great today.
We didn't break up because we no longer had feelings. We didn't break up because love died out.
We broke up because one day, our love was put in front of a cruel condition: either me or them. And I became the choice that could be lost.
There is something deeply devastating when you leave not because they no longer love you, but because they cannot protect you. When they abandon you not out of a lack of feeling, but out of a lack of courage.
Even today, after a month and a half of silence, the pain has not subsided. It has changed form. It has learned to live with me. There are nights that wake me up with memories and days that weigh on my chest for no apparent reason.
When you told me you missed me, when you told me you still wanted me, but nothing was possible for the two of us anymore, you broke my heart in a different way. Because it's a special pain to know that you still live in someone, but you're no longer their choice. To know that you're loved in absence, but impossible in reality.
I am not a story that is hidden by being called "separation". Our love was not a chapter to close, because that would be okay with the word you gave, to fulfill the sick ego that chose them and not your wife and shelter. I expected security and courage, not fear and selfishness, because I forgave you a love that I gave everything. A woman who believed. Who stayed. Who built, despite the many reasons that, in another case, that woman would have chosen to leave you, but put you before everything.
I'm not writing to accuse or to ask for revenge... maybe I'm lying, deep down I'm waiting for you, my love.
I'm writing because some loves shouldn't be kept silent. Because feelings don't fade even though others decide so.
If one day, in a false calm, you feel an emptiness that you can't explain, know that there was a woman there who loved you with all her soul. Without conditions. Without fear. Without a way out.
If one day you ask yourself what you lost, I want you to know: I gave everything I knew how to give. With a pure heart.
I still love you.
Even if this is the most painful thing I've ever accepted.
- Written for Anabel by an anonymous woman, for the “Untold Stories” column – the haven where we recount those moments when the heart wants to speak, whether about the good or the difficult, about the deepest feelings that we don't want to keep inside. If you too would like to share your story, write to us at [email protected] .
