Andrew Keller

‚I Was the One Who Let You Go’ There was a time when being with you felt like the most natural thing in the world. Like we didn’t have to think too hard about it. You would look at me across a room and I would already know where I belonged. It didn’t feel complicated then. It just felt like us. I don’t know when that started to change. Not in one moment. More like a slow pressure I didn’t know how to hold without breaking something. You started asking me to stay a little more, to be present in ways I kept promising I would get better at. And I kept believing I would. But somewhere along the way, I began to feel like I was disappointing you more often than I was showing up for you. Like every promise I made came back unfinished. Like the man you believed in was slowly falling short of the life we were trying to build together. “I can’t be what you need without hurting you,” I said in the end. Like saying it out loud made it responsible instead of scared. You didn’t stop loving me that day. You fought for it. You always fought for us longer than I did. But I had already started stepping out of the life we were trying to hold together. I signed the papers first. I told myself it was the right thing, that distance would turn into clarity, that you would eventually be better without someone who kept falling short of what you needed. It didn’t feel like relief. It just felt like silence I didn’t know what to do with. Three years passed like that. Not moving on. Just not going back. Until I stopped lying to myself about why I stayed away. Not because it was right. Because I was afraid of facing what I had done. And that was the moment I opened my phone, your name already there, and finally gathered the courage to write what I should have said a long time ago. Can we talk? (42, 6‘1, image from Pinterest)