𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐄𝐆𝐀𝐃𝐄𝐒 ~| 𝘓𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘰 𝘕𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘴

What's Left of You

~'~

𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐈 𝐛𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟𝐟 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮?

𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐈'𝐦 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟𝐟 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮

𝐍𝐨, 𝐈'𝐦 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟𝐟 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮

𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐠𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐞𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐞

𝐈 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐥𝐞𝐟𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮

‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿

Lando

It's a curious thing, how pain occupies space.

I don't feel like I'm drowning, though maybe I should.

There's no suffocation, no thrashing or grasping for air. The ache isn't like a noose around my neck or a weight on my chest. It's simply there, massive and immovable, heavy as the earth itself.

I think it might bury me.

If I lose her, it will.

I've lost before. Loved before. But it was never like this. No love before her was so bright it burned, so relentless it scorched every dark corner of me and made me believe, for the first time, that I was worth saving. No love before her taught me how devastating hope could be, the kind of hope you cling to with every shard of your fractured heart because to let go of it would end you.

The last time I loved someone, she slipped away, and there was nothing I could do but let her. I thought I'd survived it then. Told myself I had. Walked through life afterward wearing my grief like a mask, convincing everyone, myself included, that I could be whole again.

But maybe you don't survive something like that. Maybe you just exist in its aftermath, learning how to pretend.

I didn't know how hollow I was until she filled every broken, aching piece of me and made me want to live again. Not just exist. But really, truly live. And now she's the only life I want, the only future I can see, and it's slipping away.

I don't know how to stop it.

There has to be a reason. Something more than chance. People like her don't happen by accident. Not to someone like me. She isn't random. She isn't ordinary. Because she saved me in every way a person can be saved.

And maybe that's what scares me most, that this overwhelming, all-consuming love wasn't meant to be mine. That I was given a glimpse of something I'd never deserved to hold onto, and this is the price for daring to believe I could keep it.

There has to be a reason for this. A reason why she came into my life when she did, why she set fire to the cold, dead parts of me I thought were too far gone. Because this pain isn't natural. It isn't bearable. It isn't anything I was made to endure. It's her absence pressing down on every atom of my being, tearing through me like I'm nothing without her.

And I'm not.

She saved me. And if she leaves, she'll take all of me with her.

It's unbearable, the weight of loving someone so completely that they are woven into the fabric of who you are. She is everything. I don't know where she begins and I end anymore, and losing her would mean unraveling the only thread holding me together.