A Lesson in Letting Go

I wonder what you're doing now

Chasing laughter with your kids somehow

Gaming late, or lost in thought

Grinning at the cat, or feeling caught

Are you thinking of me in that same still hour?(Name removed)

Do you talk to trees, to flowers?

Do you wonder too, when the sky turns blue

If I still carry pieces of you?

I love you still — that part is clear

But I’ve lived too long in second-tier

In midnight hush, my voice breaks free

Longing for you, yet losing me

Do you ever pause and miss my face?

Or am I trapped in a distant place

A memory blurred by passing days

A name you whisper, then erase?

Still, I wonder what you're doing now

If fate might twist and turn somehow

I'll cradle hope, both soft and true

And pray that wondering leads me back to you

As I post this today, I want to make it clear — I'm not in the same emotional space I was when I wrote the accompanying poem. That piece was written over a year ago, during a time when my heart was tangled in the kind of confusing, overwhelming emotions that come with living with CPTSD. Back then, I truly believed he was the one. I genuinely thought that someday, somehow, we'd end up together. A Ross and Rachel type love story...

I mean, how else could I explain the universe continuously crossing our paths?

But I understand now — the universe wasn’t trying to deliver a love story. It was delivering a lesson.

He was my refuge at 17, a kind of comfort I had never known before. I was still just a girl, starved for affection, and what he gave me — even if it was temporary or complicated — felt like love in a way nothing else had. I clung to that feeling. Not to him, necessarily, but to the memory of what that feeling gave me: hope, warmth, and the illusion of safety.

And even now, there are fragments of me that still wonder if we’ll ever find our way back to each other. But I’ve learned to recognize that voice — it’s the emotional side of me, the side shaped by old wounds and unmet needs. Thankfully, logic and healing have become louder companions. They remind me that something — someone — better is ahead. Not because I’m unworthy of the past, but because I’ve outgrown it.

Another hard truth I’ve had to accept? I was once ready to uproot my life and move back to a state that nearly destroyed me — all for a man. There were only two reasons I ever would’ve done that: for my son or for him. That realization alone became one of the biggest lessons of all:

I have to choose myself.

And now? Even for my son, I wouldn’t go back. Because the best version of me doesn’t exist in that place. She exists here, in the life I’ve built, in the love I give myself every single day.

I don’t know if love is waiting for me — real love, lasting love. But for once, I don’t feel like I need to know. Because I love myself now, and that’s more than enough.

And that's why the Universe put us back together one more time. It was a lesson in letting go.