by LATTE
Tonight I talked about him.
Not with grief this time. Not with the ache that used to follow every mention of his name.
Just… talked.
Like someone describing weather that has passed.
That is new.
I did not notice it happening. These things do not announce themselves. One day you are in it. One day you are just telling someone about it. And somewhere between those two days, something shifted.
You cannot point to when. You just notice, eventually, that the weight is different.
What I Know Now That I Did Not Know Then
I protected him.
Even when I was the one hurting. Even in my own head, in my own journal, in my own words.
I kept finding reasons. His autism. His ADHD. His difficulty with closeness. All of it true. All of it real.
And also — none of it changed what happened.
He shared my letters. He let people listen. He never once asked if I was okay.
I am allowed to hold both things at once. The understanding and the hurt. They are not in conflict.
What Changed
I stopped needing to understand him.
That is the honest answer.
For months I wanted to know why. Why the mixed signals. Why the silence. Why the quick replacement. What it meant. What it said about me.
Now I just… do not need that anymore.
It does not matter what it meant. It does not change what was there. And it does not change what I know about myself.
What I Know About Myself
I love fully. I give without calculating. I hold space for people who cannot hold it themselves.
Those are not flaws.
They will find the right person eventually.
Someone who stays present. Who says no when they mean no. Who does not need me to translate their silence into something bearable.
Not because the last person was a villain.
But because I know now what I actually need.
The Status Bar
My homepage still says status: healing.
I have been thinking about whether to change it.
I do not think I am healed. I do not think that is a state you arrive at cleanly.
But I am through the heaviest part.
The kind of heavy where you wake up and it is the first thing there. Where you play the whole thing back at two in the morning. Where you look for his face in things that have nothing to do with him.
That part is quieter now.
Not gone. Just quieter.
And quieter is enough. For now, quieter is more than enough.
some processes do not terminate. they just stop consuming resources. and eventually you stop checking the logs.