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Phone Notes

There are so many words to choose from, and I’m terrified of choosing wrong.If I say the wrong ones, I can’t take them back. And if I can’t take them back, you might walk away. And if I lose you, I lose myself, too.So, I shove it all down. I stay quiet. Play it safe.Except in the quiet, you start pulling away. The distance grows. My panic builds. And then the dam breaks.The wrong words spill out as half-truths. Too sharp, too literal. Leaving behind things I can never unsay.And my mind rewires the rule: speaking leads to loss. It leads to punishment.I go back to silence. You’re left with half the truth, and I’m left swallowing the rest.I tried silence. And I lost you.I said the wrong words. And I lost you.So, if silence guaranteed the end, and some truth only hurried it along, was I ever meant to keep you?Except, my mind refuses that thought. Instead, I think: Next time, I must find the right words.So here I am. Waiting for next time.And next time, I'll surely think: There are so many words to choose from, and I’m terrified of choosing wrong.

Two middle children.Both raised in the quiet margins, with unhealed wounds of being "the forgotten one."We learned young: don't take up space. Don't be a burden.We kept our hurt quiet, both of us waiting for the other to notice the silence and break it.We loved each other fiercely, but we never learned how to meet each other where we were.We gave space when we needed to be reached for.We offered quiet when we starved for honesty.We both wanted to be seen and heard so badly, that we forgot to look and listen.And in trying not to be a burden, we only deepened the familiar ache of
being loved, yet still somehow forgotten.

I realize maybe love is just a quiet surrender to someone else’s way of moving through the world. It’s when you secretly think their way is the only right way.Even with all the things I am too stubborn to change, I still hear their logic in the back of my head. Part of me will always know their way is better.

Deafening and deliberate silence. No voice, no warmth, not a single scrap of grace sent your way, and you still carry his ghost like a holy relic day after day.You sit here, serving a life sentence of your own making, believing his absence feasts on you. But dear girl, that’s far from true.He cut the cord thinking you were a parasite. He built a stone wall, thinking: watch how quickly she withers when there is nothing left to take.And isn’t that the ultimate, bitter joke? He walked away convinced you were draining him. So, he gave you nothing. Quite literally nothing. And yet, you stay right here, offering an unkillable, bottomless devotion in exchange for his nothing.He thought he was saving himself when in reality, he severed a relationship with one of the only people alive willing to love him for nothing at all.

They think I’m talking about the weather when I say the sun went into hiding from September to July.The real winter was the slow suffocation of watching myself disappear in the gloom while the person next to me acted like my drowning was a personal inconvenience.They didn't see a woman fighting for air; they saw a mess they had to step over. That cold guest bed had more warmth to give than someone who resented me for being sick.

You deserve to be with someone who gets more excited about your birthday than you do. Someone who will hide gifts you didn't know you ever wanted under the bed for months, anticipating the morning they finally get to give it to you.You deserve a ride waiting at the curb every single time your plane lands, without hesitation.You deserve a partner who understands that family matters. That work can be put down because life is happening at the table or in that landlocked state right now.And when the hard days hit, when you wake up in a cold hospital room after a terrifying surgery, or you’re standing in the grief of losing someone you hold dear, you deserve someone who doesn't check their calendar to see if your pain is convenient.Showing up for the person you love should be an instinct, never a favor.

There is a strange grief in realizing that irritation was actually a privilege.To be annoyed by someone means their clothes are scattered on the bedroom floor. It means their stubborn breath is filling your kitchen, their habits are grating against your own, and your lives are actively colliding. It means you are alive together in the friction.When loneliness settles into the room, peace stops feeling like relief and starts feeling unbearable. I would trade every second of this quiet just to have someone here, even if they got under my skin.Give me the sharp sighs, the petty grievances, the heat of exasperation, because having someone you love enough to be upset with is an honor, and I would rather endure your worst days than a single day without you.

Every accidental glimpse felt like a fresh wound; I thought I wanted nothing more than to live somewhere they couldn't exist.But safety has a cost. Those street corners were painful, but they were also the last proof that we shared a world.To leave is to look at a fragile, lingering thread and choose to cut it with your own hands.

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Personal Stories

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