Twenty-Five

What’s Worse?

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Someone once asked me, “What’s worse? Loving someone you can’t have? Or having someone you can’t love?”

I didn’t even have to think about it. I just smiled.

“Leaving someone you can never unlove,” I said.

Because that’s the one that stays with you. That’s the one that doesn’t let you sleep at night. That’s the one that turns ordinary places into graveyards, where memories haunt the air like ghosts you never learned how to live without.

I don’t know if people realize how heavy love can be. How it can sit on your chest long after the person is gone. How it can turn into something you carry in your bones.

I left on a Tuesday.

Not a dramatic exit, no slammed doors, no screaming in the rain. Just a quiet, tired kind of leaving.

I don’t talk about them anymore, not really. But some days, I feel them. In the way the evening light hits my window just right. In the way a certain scent in the air makes my chest tighten. In the way my fingers reach for something — someone — that isn’t there.

And if there’s one thing I know, it’s this: Love doesn’t always fade. Sometimes, it just settles. Like…