There are absences that echo louder than any presence. They have no clear shape, yet they seep into everything — into the silence of rooms, into air that suddenly feels heavier.
Yours, I feel it like a shadow trailing me, an invisible mark etched deep. It's not just your leaving that haunts me, but everything that led to it.
That exact moment when I understood — without a word — that what was unraveling could never be mended.
There was no outcry, no dramatic scene. Just a slow, silent piling of certainties until they became unbearable. This separation, I carry it like a searing memory. And yet, it never struck like a sudden blow.
It was already there, long before I could admit it. I think, somewhere deep down, I knew we had already left each other — even while we were still there, lingering in moments of waiting, in conversations that never touched the heart of things.
I've often wondered: when did you start to leave?
Was it during one of those lighthearted talks where I didn't have the right words?
Was it in my silences, my hesitations?
Maybe you were already gone before I realized it. Maybe I refused to see what your eyes were screaming.
I held on to an idea of us — to what we could have been. But that idea crumbled slowly, stone by stone, until nothing remained.
Now I face this absence alone. It has claimed its place, methodically. It's not just an emptiness in space — it lives in me. An absence I cannot outrun. It follows me like my own shadow. Everything I do seems to crash into it. It doesn't scream. It doesn't show itself in fits of pain or desperate cries.
No — it's far more insidious, more quiet. A constant whisper, a presence in the margins, where I least expect it.
When I make coffee. When I hear a song you loved. When I stumble on a detail that recalls a moment we shared. The absence is there. It doesn't shout, but it holds me. It has this strange ability to turn what should be mundane into something painfully significant.
And yet, this absence is not only pain. It's also a cold realization — an unrelenting truth that throws me back at myself. It's not just you who left, but also a part of who I was with you.
A version of me I will never recover. Your departure marked the end of an "us," but also the loss of a "me" I no longer recognize.
I keep wondering what this absence means.
Not just yours, but the deeper one. The older one. This sense of disconnection, of being apart — as if part of me never truly knew how to belong. I keep circling back to the thought that absence was already there, long before you left. That what I feel now is only a continuation, an amplification of a deeper lack I carried long before you.
And maybe that's what ruined everything: this inability to fill the void inside, this fear of losing myself by opening up completely. Maybe you sensed it — that lack — and it drove you away, even if you didn't want it to.
Maybe my failure to give you what you needed wasn't about lacking love, but courage. And now, this absence — it's also the absence of all I failed to become.
But there's something else. Something strange. Almost cruel. Your absence feels more real now than it ever did when we were still in touch. As if, by vanishing completely, you took on a more solid, more invasive shape. When you were still there — even from a distance — there was still the illusion that things could be saved. That something could shift.
But now, there's nothing left to hope for. Only this absence remains — becoming an echo, a relentless reminder of what might have been.
I realize now that this absence has a strange beauty. It's not only pain. It is also memory. It holds all those shared moments, those fleeting bits of happiness, those stolen smiles. It bears witness to what we were, and what we failed to become.
Imperfect, yes — but still precious. It reminds me that, despite everything, there was something. And no one can take that away from me.
I don't know if I'll get used to it — if it will fade into background noise, into a part of me. For now, it's still too vivid, too present. But I can feel it shifting. It doesn't crush me the same way anymore.
It's becoming something else. A silent companion. Part of me is beginning to accept it — to understand that it will never fully go away. And maybe that's the lesson in all of this: learning to live with absences, with what's missing, without trying to fill it or flee from it.
In that acceptance, there's a kind of peace — even if it's tinged with melancholy. A recognition that some things cannot be changed, that some stories cannot be rewritten.
And maybe in that melancholy lies the beauty of absence. It forces us to look inward, to face what we flee, to understand that sometimes, what we lack is also what makes us.
So I keep writing. The words come more easily now — as if this introspection has opened something within me.
**
"I know your absence is now part of me — an indelible shadow, but also a soft light that illuminates what we shared. I don't know if I'll ever find the words to fully express what I feel, but I want you to know that, despite everything, I'm grateful for what we had.
Even if it didn't last. Even if it ended this way. Those moments remain within me — intact and precious."
**
I reread these lines, and for the first time, I feel a quiet sincerity. Not a resolution. Not full forgiveness. But a beginning.
An attempt to accept what I cannot change.
And to keep moving even with this absence that will always walk beside me.