Loving Me . . . dont do it


I have never had to face a version of myself that I hate more than the one I see now.

It is not only the things I have done. It is the fact that I can finally see them clearly. I can see the damage without the excuses I once placed around it. I can see what my choices cost you, what they cost our family, and what they cost me. Every realization arrives too late to change anything, but never too late to make the next day harder than the one before it.

I destroyed the things I loved while somehow believing I would always have time to repair them.



You remind me that this is the path I chose. That I made this bed, and now I have to lie in it. I know you are right. I know I do not get to ask for freedom from consequences simply because they finally became painful enough for me to understand. But a consequence can be deserved and still be unbearable. A bed can be one I made and still feel like a grave when I wake up in it alone.

I am not asking you to pretend I did not hurt you.


I am not asking you to forget what happened, or to return simply because regret has finally brought me to my knees. I know remorse does not rebuild trust. I know an apology cannot travel backward and stand between you and every moment I made you feel alone.

I just need you to understand that I am not walking away from this untouched.

I am beyond crushed. Maybe you are not. Maybe what looks like peace from where I stand is simply the way you learned to survive me. But watching you move through the wreckage as if it no longer cuts you makes me feel even more alone inside it. I keep looking for some sign that losing us wounded you too. Not because I want you to suffer, but because the thought that this might only be destroying one of us is almost impossible to carry.

Every piece of my life has you in it.


You are in the memories I cannot revisit without changing the way I breathe. You are in the music, the photographs, the ordinary places, the jokes no one else would understand. You are in the version of me that existed before everything went wrong, and in the person I am desperately trying to become now. Even the future I am supposed to build without you is made from plans that once had your name written through them.

The past ten months have been the most painful of my life. I have had to watch the distance between us become normal. I have watched *temporary* quietly lose its meaning. I have lived on small moments of warmth from you, treating each one like evidence that home might still exist, only to realize that kindness is not the same thing as hope.

I cannot do this alone.


That is not me saying you are responsible for saving me. You are not. It is me admitting that I do not yet know how to carry the full weight of what I have done while also grieving the person I used to tell everything to. I lost my wife, my closest friend, and the future I believed in—and somehow, you are still the first person I want to reach for when the loss becomes too heavy.

I am sorry for everything. I know those words mean nothing now. I have used language where action was required, promises where consistency was needed, and regret where change should have arrived much sooner. “I’m sorry” is painfully small beside what it is trying to contain.

But it is still true.

I am sorry for the pain I gave you.

I am sorry that loving me became something you had to recover from.


This is not a farewell
This is the moment I finally admit that the life I have spent ten months trying to crawl back into no longer exists—and that I am the last person still living in it.