it hurts like hell

— DP —

If you had not said you were tired,
perhaps I would have stayed a little longer.
Perhaps I would have gathered
every broken piece of our past
and tried to build us a home
out of all the things
that once tore us apart.

I still had words left to tell you.
I still had questions buried in my chest,
and a thousand little reasons
to ask you not to disappear again.

God, I still had so much love
I didn’t know where to put.

But then you said you were tired.

And somehow,
those three words
did what years of silence could not—
they taught me how to leave.

Because how could I ask you to stay
when even the thought of staying
had become a burden to you?

How could I beg for one more chapter
when you had already put the book down,
your hands trembling beneath its weight,
your heart no longer willing
to turn another page?

So I swallowed every argument
I had prepared against goodbye.
I buried every what if
beneath a quiet little smile,
and gave you the only thing
I had never wanted to give you:

my permission to leave.

It’s okay, Pi. You can give up on us.
I have given up on myself, too.

Not because I never wanted you.
Not because the years meant nothing.
Not because the girl who loved you
has finally learned how not to.

But because I cannot keep knocking
on a door you are too tired to open,
and I cannot call it love
if I must be the only one
keeping us alive.

You came back
and, for a little while,
the world returned a piece of my youth.

I heard your voice
and remembered the girl I used to be—
the one who believed
that some people were worth waiting for,
even when waiting became
another word for breaking.

And then, just as gently
as you returned,
you told me you were tired.

So I will not ask you to fight.
I will not ask you to stay.
I will not ask whether you will miss me
when the silence finds you again.

I have asked enough questions
to last a lifetime.

Perhaps you will remember me
on an ordinary afternoon,
in a song we used to know,
or in a passing thought
you will never tell anyone about.

Perhaps I will cross your mind
and leave just as quietly
as I came.

And perhaps, one day,
I will remember you
without feeling the old ache
of a girl who never got to say goodbye.

But tonight,
I am still that girl
standing at the edge of our ending,
with a thousand words in her mouth
and no one left to say them to.

I could have fought for us, Pi.

I really could have.

But you were tired,
and I loved you enough
not to turn my love
into another thing
you needed to escape.

So this is goodbye.

Not the goodbye I dreamed of.
Not the goodbye we deserved.
Not even the goodbye
my heart is ready for.

Just the goodbye
I have finally learned to give.

And before I let this ending become
another unanswered question,
I want to say one thing:

Thank you for coming back one more time.

Thank you for giving me
the closure I never knew
I was still waiting for.

Thank you for letting me hear your voice again,
for allowing me to see you
not as the memory I had preserved,
but as the person you are now.

Maybe your return
was not meant to begin again.
Maybe it was only meant
to help me understand
why we had to end.

And if there is one last thing
I wish you could understand,
it is this:

I did not leave because
I had nothing left to fight for.

I left because
you had nothing left to give.

You were tired of carrying us.
I was tired of carrying the hope
that you would carry us again.

So I will not call this
the love that failed.

I will call it
the love I refused to drag
past its final breath.

You were my first love,
but you will not be
the last place I disappear.

I loved you enough to stay.
I loved you enough to fight.
And when you could no longer meet me there,
I loved myself enough
to stop fighting alone.

That is the part of us
I will carry forward:

not that you left,
not that I was abandoned,
but that I finally understood—

love can be real,
and still be over.

I could have fought for us.

But I will not spend
the rest of my life
proving I was worth staying for.