Ink & Silence: For Your Eyes Only
"The memory that lingered too long"
Last night, I wrote everything out.
Every tangled thought, every confusing sign, every raw and aching feeling I’ve held onto.
I sat with myself, quietly, honestly—and maybe for the first time in a long while, I saw things clearly.
Every detail, every perceived sign, every feeling.
I let it all spill out of me like ink. And it hurt. It still does.
But I have to be honest with myself now,
and with the version of you I’ve carried in my mind.
I don’t love you. I have limerence.
That’s the hardest sentence I’ve ever had to write.
Because it feels like love. It burns like it. It consumes like it.
But… it’s not.
Not the real kind. Not the kind that grows in the open air of truth and reality.
I am not obsessed with you. I am having obsessive thoughts.
You’ve become a loop in my mind, a beautiful one—but a loop all the same.
A fixation I couldn’t let go of.
I dressed it up in fantasy and hope, in longing and illusion.
But now I see the difference.
It is 100% an addiction and addictions can be broken.
I’ve held onto you like a craving—seeking comfort in your name,
relapsing into the what-ifs and could-have-beens.
But I know now that I can live without it.
And more than that—I must.
I’ve reduced you to fragments of a person and come up with this big idea that you are everything I need.
The truth is, Carl, I didn’t know all of you.
I fell in love with pieces. With ideas. With a story I told myself
over and over again, until it sounded like fact.
But love—real love—is whole. It sees the person fully.
And I only ever saw the outline of you.
And that’s a lie.
A beautiful one. A gentle one. But still a lie.
And I have to stop feeding it.
I have everything I need.
I always have.
I am not missing a piece. I am not incomplete.
You are not the answer to a question I never needed to ask.
You are a distraction and while you’re certainly not my only distraction, you are my favorite.
You were soft comfort when the world got loud.
You were a daydream I kept returning to.
A name that made my heart beat a little too fast.
But you’re not real—not the way I made you to be.
But you’re also the most time-consuming and soul-leeching of them all.
You became a storm I willingly walked into.
Again and again.
And now, I am tired of drowning in the waves.
I don’t think I’m going to instantly stop thinking of you…
But I am not going to give you space in my mind that belongs to me.
I won’t keep building altars in my thoughts for someone who isn’t standing there.
…but I do know that I am going to be proactive in minimizing these thoughts.
It starts now.
With truth. With care. With compassion—for both of us.
I’m no longer going to allow myself to succumb to them.
I am choosing clarity.
I am choosing to let you go—kindly, quietly, fully.
I’m going to put more effort into myself and the relationships around me.
The ones who’ve held me through my storms.
The ones who never needed fantasy to love me.
Healthy relationships based on reality and the unconditional love of those who have seen me at my best, worst, and everything in between.
That’s the kind of love I deserve.
The kind I want to give.
And maybe one day, if paths cross again—
It’ll be as two people who’ve both healed.
But not today.
Today, I set you down with gratitude and grace.
