Unwritten Shadows of a Clouded Mind

Unwanted Whispers

There's a certain madness that comes with trying to hold onto something that's already slipping through your fingers, like trying to grasp water only to watch it spill away, drop by drop.

I know this madness well; it has become a familiar companion, a quiet, persistent presence in the back of my mind.

I keep replaying the memories, over and over, like a film reel stuck on repeat. Each time, the images are the same: your smile, the way your eyes crinkled at the corners when you laughed, the warmth of your presence I can feel whenever you're around. But with each repetition, the colors fade a little more, the edges blur, and I'm left with the aching fear that someday, they'll disappear altogether, leaving only shadows where you once were.

I don't know how to let go.

The thought of it feels like losing a part of myself, like cutting away a piece of my own heart and leaving it behind. I know it's what I'm supposed to do—

I've read all the books, heard all the advice. "Letting go is the first step to healing," they say. "You can't move forward if you're still holding onto the past." But none of that helps when the past is all I have left of you.

I want so desperately to hold onto the good memories, the ones that make my heart ache in the best way.

I want to remember the way you made me feel like I was the only person in the world who mattered, like nothing else could ever come between us.

But those memories are tangled up with the bad ones, the ones that remind me of how everything fell apart, of how you slipped away while I was still holding on.

There's a quote that has stayed with me, though I do not remember where it's specifically from, haunting me in the quiet moments when I'm alone with my thoughts: "Sometimes, the hardest part isn't letting go, but learning to start over."

Starting over feels impossible when you're still carrying the weight of what was lost.

I don't know how to start over.

The idea of building something new, something that doesn't include you, feels like a betrayal, like I'm erasing everything we shared.

But at the same time, I know I can't keep living in the past, can't keep replaying the same scenes over and over, hoping for a different ending.

And yet, here I am, caught between the desire to move forward and the fear of letting go.

It's like standing on the edge of a cliff, looking down into the abyss below, knowing that you have to jump but terrified of what awaits you on the other side.

I've tried to distract myself, to fill the empty spaces you left behind with other things, other people. But nothing seems to fit the way you did.

Everything feels hollow, like I'm just going through the motions, pretending to be okay when inside, I'm anything but.

I've tried to convince myself that it's for the best, that we weren't meant to be, that you're better off without me. But those thoughts do nothing to ease the pain, do nothing to fill the void that you left behind. They're just empty words, like a bandage over a wound that refuses to heal.

There's a poem I wrote in the early days of our separation, when the pain was still fresh and raw, like an open wound. I never showed it to you—by then, we were already too far gone, and I knew it would only make things worse. But now, as I sit here, surrounded by the remnants of what we once were, I feel the need to bring it out, to give voice to the words that have been locked away for so long.

"In the Quiet of Your Absence"

In the quiet of your absence,
I find myself unraveling,
Thread by thread,
Until there is nothing left but emptiness,
And the echoes of what we once were.