A Note for any Man I Loved This Year.

*Plays "Don't Know How to Keep Loving You. - Julia Jacklin

Dear You,

The women in my family are cursed. At least that's how it feels sometimes. We love without instruction, only instinct, handed down like heirlooms wrapped in warning. When I met you, it felt like fate misbehaving, our paths colliding with too much ease to be coincidence. We spoke in shorthand, mirrored each other’s taste, recognized familiar wounds and called it connection. At first, loving you felt like being drunk on possibility. Time loosened its grip. Every message felt special, and every laugh felt like a sign. My anxiety masqueraded as devotion, and I let myself believe that intensity meant truth. I wanted you the way you want something rare, with reverence and fear of losing it at the same time.

There was something unnameable pulling us together. Something old, something unfinished. I loved you loudly in my thoughts and carefully in my actions, trying to stay soft without shrinking myself. I asked for reassurance quietly, hoping you would hear it anyway.

But love does not arrive alone. It brings history with it.

Being with you stirred up memories of every man who taught me how to anticipate loss. My unhealed wounds surfaced as distrust, as emotional static, as confusion I could not organize fast enough. I did not always know what was real, only that I was afraid of being unseen again. And still, you could not see me past my anxious attachment. Past my need to be chosen clearly and consistently. Your ego made space for comparison, measured me against women who came before, as if I were something to be ranked. But I am not them. I never was.

I live beneath the surface. I do not know how to love casually. I wanted us to be ready, ready to heal, ready to take responsibility, ready to meet each other without defenses. But readiness cannot be negotiated, and love cannot survive where growth is optional.

So we ended in the only way we knew how, with tenderness and fracture, with feelings too big for the moment we were in. Another almost, another lesson disguised as loss.

Regardless of all of this, regardless of how it hurt or why it failed, I did love you. I do love you. And I wish things were different.

Truthfully,

Me