Today, I found myself reflecting deeply on everything that’s happened since my divorce… on my ex, on the kids, on the home I lost, and the self I found.
It’s strange, in a painful, poetic kind of way. I didn’t leave by choice. I was told it would be temporary… a week, maybe two. Then everything changed. That house, the one we began building our lives in, became hers. And I became the one standing outside it, broken open on the driveway, crying in a way I never had before. Something fractured that day, and as devastating as it was, I’ve come to realize that fracture and our time together is what made space for the person I am now.
I wouldn’t have healed if I’d stayed. That house held too many echoes, too many unspoken words, too much inherited silence. Too much shared trauma. It would have swallowed me. But out here… outside of all that… I found clarity. I found regulation. I found myself.
They’re still in the house. Still in the loop. Still trying to parent, study, processing, and hold everything together from inside a space that was never safe to begin with. And now, I can see it: how overwhelming it all was, anxious and avoidantly attached, maybe even scared of how much had changed… because stability reminds us of everything we still wrestle with.
The echo of my love still lives there. Because it was real, it is real. At least for me. For me, it was supposed to last forever, lasting through the tests of time. Through loss, through dysregulation, emotional turmoil, through it all. Because for me it was and is unconditional and forever.
Still, I’m not chasing that love. I’m not waiting in the way people mean when they say “waiting.” I’m honoring. I’m staying true to the love I held in that space. For me, love isn’t temporary. It remains.
I love her. I always will.
Not with desperation. But with devotion. A promise made and kept.
I’ve chosen not to seek out love elsewhere, not because I’m broken, but because she was my person. And if she never comes back, I’ll still be proud of the man I found in her presence and became in her absence. Because for the first time in years, I can say I kept my promise. I said I’d stay. And I did. My love now comes from a place of stability, not anxious from abandonment.
Now, I stay for my kids. I stay for a love that still echoes. I stay for me.
I stay as the lantern, not the lighthouse.
I stay as the person who no longer needs someone to complete me.
Because I am already whole.
I found love
I don’t talk much about soulmates. I’m not even sure I believe in them. But there are days… quiet ones, usually… when the thought lingers longer than I expect. Days when memory presses up against the edges of now, and I wonder if some connections really are written into us before we even know how to read them.
This isn’t about fate. Or fairy tales. Or the kind of love that always ends up together in the end. It’s not a romantic comedy where grand gestures win someone’s heart. This is about staying. And the shape love still holds even after the story shifts.
There’s someone I loved. Still do. Not with ache. With reverence. Not to hold on. But to hold space. Because when I said “I do,” I meant it.
I did. I still do.
And I always will.
We had a life. A shared orbit. A slow unraveling neither of us planned. And when it all changed, something in me fractured. But it was through that fracture that I found clarity.
I Found Darkness
Meeting her was the beginning of discovering who I am. She saw me from the start—clearly, gently. It just took me time to catch up. I thought healing was a journey without end, a road you walk forever.
But I see it differently now. In that fracture at the end of my world, I found darkness. Where pieces of me went to hide from a world too small or narrow-minded to hold space for. I found a place I hadn’t visited since I was a child. I found my flaws, my failures, my mixed emotions that couldn’t be named. I found a grove that once lived in my inner landscape. A place of wonder, where shadows and lanternlings play. I found my pain—not the surface kind—the real kind. The kind we hide not only from others, but ourselves. The bits of us we were told shouldn’t exist.
But what I saw as I stood at that opening was a pattern. It was the shape of me. The shape of love. And the home that always should have existed within me. I didn’t just find my pain—I found my hope.
I didn’t chase my shadows to defeat them. I stepped into the darkness to hold space for them—even the scary ones. Because they weren’t something to fight, dismiss, or heal. They were something to hold, and bring back into the hollowed out shell of who I had to become to fit into a world that tried to shape me.
Healing—real healing—often leads to a precipice. It can feel strange, even scary, and it often hurts. It’s a moment of knowing. But from that edge, we step into something more.
Each precipice becomes a foundation.
Each healed part becomes terrain—a map of who we are.
One we can use whenever we feel lost.
And now, I’m not standing at the edge of more healing.
I’m standing in something steadier.
Grounding. Rooting. Becoming solid in who I really am.
I Found Myself
I found myself in meeting her.
I found myself again in our parting.
And for that, I am deeply grateful.
I don’t wait. I don’t pine.
I simply carry the shape love made in me.
I don’t know if soulmates are real.
But I know I loved someone who made me believe they could be.
And even if we never share another chapter, that truth remains.
Quiet. Whole. Undemanding.
Sometimes, even love that ends can be the beginning of becoming.
And sometimes, the most honest thing we can do…
is stay true.
Even when we stand alone.
A Message for Others Like Me
If you find yourself loving someone from afar… not in desperation, but in quiet, rooted reverence… know this:
Holding space for love does not mean you’re stuck.
It doesn’t make you less healed.
It doesn’t make you weak.
It means the love was real.
And your heart remembered how to hold something without needing to possess it.
You don’t have to chase closure.
You don’t have to rewrite the ending.
You can honor what was… fully, beautifully… without losing who you are.
Because some loves don’t fade.
They settle.
They soften.
They become part of your foundation.
And if it was true for you, then it was true.
That’s enough.
You are enough.
Still whole. Still becoming. Still standing.
And you’re not alone in that.
We all just want to be somebody—to others, to ourselves. We often seek out that meaning in people making us whole. But finding out who we are isn’t in the way others fulfill us—it’s in the presence they offer, the space they allow for the real us to emerge.
When you find someone like that, they leave something behind.
A piece of them only found in your connection.
For me, that piece is one crafted from love.
And even if we’re no longer together, I’m thankful they believed in me before I could.
I’m thankful they gave me space long enough for the real me to emerge.
I don’t know what the future holds for me.
But for the first time, I am able to hold it in return.
I no longer share only pieces of me—
I share the sanctuary of me.
One made from wonder and shadows.
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