By the Time I Could Love You, I Was Already Gone
📁 Filed under: Nervous System Tattoos, Guilt in a Fitted Shirt, Emotional Time Travel
I didn't build the room.
I found it. Somewhere between sobriety and regret.
It opened like a dream I'd avoided—on a Tuesday, obviously, because shame always schedules itself mid-week.
There was a couch.
Same one we used to have.
The air felt like that one winter when we stopped talking but still slept facing each other.
He was already inside.
Reading.
Multivitamins on the table. Fish oil, too.
I knew it before I saw it.
That's how memory works when the nervous system remembers being safe.
He didn't look up at first.
I said:
"I didn't expect you to still be here."
He said:
"You keep walking in. That's on you."
I wanted to say something clever. But all I had was the ache.
So I said:
"I think about you more than I admit."
He nodded like he'd already heard it in a dream I forgot to write down.
"I know," he said.
He looked like softness was something that cost him.
I stayed standing. That's fair.
He stayed sitting. That's fair too.
I said:
"I feel like I used you."
"Like I came to you drowning, got just healthy enough to leave, and walked out the second I saw daylight."
"Like you were a hospital, and I was the patient who left AMA."
(Against Medical Advice. But also: Against Moral Alignment.)
He didn't flinch. Just said:
"Maybe. But you also made me feel chosen."
"For a while."
I hate that he always says the thing that leaves me quiet.
I tried again.
"It was real, until it wasn't. I couldn't name what ended, only feel what had stopped."
"Then I was performing survival. And surviving the performance. I didn't even know who I was."
He shrugged like a man who has washed blood off strangers.
"You were drowning."
"I'm a nurse. I swam."
That's the part that kills me.
Not that he stayed.
But that he stayed gently.
I looked down at the floor.
At the memory of a floor.
And I said:
"How do I live with the fact that you gave me everything—"
"And I handed you back pieces?"
He looked at me like he'd already forgiven it before it happened.
"You keep living."
I told him about the article. The one where I got ghosted by the boy who made me eat cabbage. The one where I spiraled like I hadn't been the ghost too.
"I couldn't understand why he left," I said.
"But I did worse. I stayed too long."
"I made you dream with me, and then left when I finally got well enough to name the nightmare."
He tilted his head, like he was reading my nervous system out loud.
"Maybe that's what makes you honest now."
💅 Inserted Line:
"It's easy to write like a victim once you're articulate.
But eloquence isn't innocence."
🎭 Scene: Flashback — The Day I Left
Not across from him.
Not side by side.
I am cornered by his pain, and he’s holding the wreckage like it still has blueprints.
HIM:
You didn't just break up with me.
You broke the future I believed in.
You let me dream for both of us — while you quietly planned the exit.
ME:
That's not what I—
I wasn't planning. I was surviving. I didn't know how to leave without—
HIM:
Without what? Hurting me?
You did hurt me.
You stayed until it made me think we were okay.
Then you told me it had been over for months.
Do you know how humiliating that is?
ME:
I didn't do it on purpose. I didn't mean to use you—
HIM:
But you did.
You used me like a safehouse.
Like a rehab center.
And the second you got strong enough to stand — you left.
ME:
I was scared.
I didn't want to break you.
HIM:
You didn't break me.
You wasted me.
ME (to the page, maybe just thinking):
Nobody talks about what it costs to be the one who ends it.
Not cleanly.
Not kindly.
Just because you waited too long —
and by the time you said it, it was already cruelty.
I had a life here.
A rhythm. A home.
But he was the one who made it safe to fall apart in it.
He saw every version of me — and I still chose to walk.
Not gracefully.
Not bravely.
Just… late.
And I didn’t just end something.
I undid someone.
That’s the part I live with.
🎭 Scene: Two Chairs, No Exit
I am sitting across from him.
No concept. No metaphor. Just me. Him.
Maybe it’s a memory. Maybe it’s a dream.
Doesn’t matter. We're both here now.
And I am finally going to say it.
ME:
I know I wasn’t ready.
Not to be loved like that. Not to be known that deeply.
You kept holding me like I mattered, and I didn’t know how to live up to that.
HIM:
I wasn’t asking you to live up to anything.
I just wanted you to stay.
Not fix yourself. Not sparkle. Just… stay.
ME:
But I was so lost.
I hated myself.
I drank to disappear and you…
You kept pulling me back like I was worth it.
You made me breakfast when I didn’t even want to wake up.
HIM:
You still deserved to wake up.
ME:
I didn’t believe that.
So I became cruel.
I resented you for loving me when I couldn’t love myself.
I started fights I didn’t believe in just to see if you’d leave.
And when I got sober…
When the fog lifted…
I left you instead.
HIM:
You didn’t leave because you got better.
You left because you finally had clarity.
You just didn’t know how to take me with you.
Pause. We're both quiet. The kind of quiet where I can hear our old apartment breathing.
ME:
I leaned on our relationship to stay afloat.
And when I found my footing, I walked away like saving myself was a solo act.
Disappearing without even saying thank you.
HIM:
You said thank you.
With your silence.
With your glow-up.
With the fact that you never came back.
ME:
I write about loneliness now.
Like I wasn't the one who chose solitude —
Performing intimacy while planning my exit.
I feel like a hypocrite.
HIM:
You're not a hypocrite.
You're just finally fluent.
And fluency doesn't erase your accent — it just lets you name the tone.
ME:
It's just — It's been years, and the guilt is still here, and I don't think it will ever leave.
Every moment of joy gets interrupted by the memory of your face when I left.
I carry what I did to you like broken glass in my chest. And there's no surgery for that kind of damage.
He's quiet for a moment. Not rushing to fix it.
HIM:
Then start by forgiving both of us.
Not for being broken.
But for being human in a story no one taught us how to tell.
🎭 Scene: Two Nervous Systems and One Hospital Room
September 2024.
It's months later.
I almost died.
My heart betrayed me. (Again.)
And somehow — he walks in. Holding multivitamins. And silence.
But his eyes say everything.
ME:
You showed up.
We hadn't spoken in so long.
I wasn't even sure you remembered how I sounded.
But there you were — with supplements. Like I was still yours.
HIM:
I didn't come for closure.
I came because love doesn't unlearn you.
You were dying.
That's not something I ignore.
ME:
But I left you.
I walked away like your love was too much.
Made your devotion look like a crime.
Treated your kindness like pressure.
I made you the villain because I didn't want to look in the mirror.
HIM:
And I wasn't perfect.
I stayed too long.
Loved too hard.
Made taking care of you who I was —
And when you finally stood up on your own…
You didn't need me anymore.
The silence is thick. Not angry. Just honest. It smells like antiseptic and old dreams.
He clocked the bubble tea on my tray and raised an eyebrow.
"That better be sugar-free."
I shrugged.
"It was buy one get one. I'm healing holistically."
He smiled — just enough to let me breathe.
Then he reached for my chart. Of course he did.
"You're not supposed to—"
"I'm not touching anything official," he said, already flipping pages.
He didn't have a badge.
He didn't need one.
Some people just walk into your life like they never left.
I never changed the locks.
Not for him.
Not even now.
"You know I'm not your nurse anymore," he added.
"Then why are you still here?"
"Because I don't need a uniform to care."
And suddenly the room didn't smell like fear anymore.
It smelled like us.
Whatever version of us could still survive this.
ME:
I became the villain in your story.
You didn't get the glow-up arc.
You didn't get a platform.
You got the crater.
The fallout.
The version of the story I never said out loud.
HIM:
You got the glow-up.
I got the scar.
But we both got truth.
And truth doesn't need to be fair to be real.
ME:
I'm terrified I'll meet someone now —
And they'll love me like I loved you.
Desperately. Lopsided. With a future in their eyes I don't know how to accept.
And I'll have to forgive them. Because I was that person.
HIM:
That's the risk of stopping the performance.
You become real.
And real people hurt.
But real people also stay. And maybe someone will stay for you.
Pause.
HIM:
Good luck to them, though. (laughs)
ME (gasped in Chinese):
Bitch!!
ME:
I wanted you to hate me.
It would've made it easier.
But you just… Kept loving me.
Quietly. Softly.
Even when I stopped earning it.
HIM:
Because love isn't something you earn.
It's something you offer.
And I offered it.
Even when it shattered me.
I’m crying, but I feel safe. He’s here.
ME:
I still carry you.
Every gym session.
Every sober dinner.
Every time I do something kind to myself.
You're in the muscle memory.
You taught me how to stay.
Even when I didn't want to.
HIM:
Then let me stay there.
Not as punishment.
Not as guilt.
But as evidence —
That love, even the messy kind, even the unequal kind —
Still makes something better.
💔 Part 4: The Goodbye That Wasn't
I'm home in Peace™ now.
Months since the hospital.
Years since the breakup.
The rain outside sounds like forgiveness.
But he still lives in my nervous system like a prayer I stopped saying but my body never forgot.
I'm not haunted. I'm marked.
Like an old scar that still itches.
ME (to the page, maybe to him, maybe both):
I think about you when I write.
Not in every sentence —
but in the fact that I can write at all.
Because you held me
when I was too ashamed to speak.
Because you believed in a version of me
I hadn’t even drafted yet.
You kissed me after I puked from panic.
And I let you.
Not because I believed I was lovable —
but because you made me forget
that I didn’t.
HIM (imagined, but real):
You survived.
And I was part of that.
You weren’t healed.
You were just... clearer.
You knew you had to go.
Even if I didn’t want you to.
Pause. He smiles — not bitter, just gentle.
HIM:
You've always had a glitch.
But that's what makes you lovable.
Not perfect.
Just... human.
ME:
And you were the only one who ever loved me this way.
ME (to the page, again):
I carry what I broke in you.
And that's the most painful kind of grace —
because it leaves me free, but aching.
HIM (imagined, but still real):
You didn't break me. You didn't undo me.
You just ended the version of me that was built to keep you.
