The Life That Only Exists in “Would”
A written soliloquy
Why does it feel like I’m punishing myself for doing the right thing?
We talked and somehow that was enough to bring everything back to life. Not fully. Not completely. Just enough to make me believe there’s still something left between us.
And for a few days, I was okay.
Okay with the silence.
Okay with your absence.
Okay pretending I could exist without you being part of my day.
But relief is temporary.
Because you’re not the kind of love that fades quietly. You linger.
In the background of songs I didn’t choose.
In scenes I wasn’t trying to feel.
In words that were never meant for you but somehow still become you.
It’s exhausting how everything keeps leading back to someone I’m trying so hard not to return to. And somehow, not reaching out to you feels worse than missing you.
Like I’m holding myself back from the only thing that might make this ache stop even if it’s just for a moment. Like I’m choosing distance over relief, even when relief is just one message away.
So I stay still. Not because I want to but because I don’t know what else to do without losing myself again.
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And then it happens quietly, without warning. A life begins to form in the softest corners of my mind.
Not loud enough to be called a dream, not real enough to be touched just enough to feel like something I’ve already lived.
There is a version of us there that doesn’t question anything.
Where presence is easy.
Where timing is kind.
Where nothing feels borrowed or uncertain.
A place where I don’t have to wonder if I’m allowed to stay because I already belong. And everything in that life leans on a single word.
Would.
We would have found our way.
We would have stayed.
We would have been something steady, something sure.
Such a quiet word for something that carries an entire life inside it.
But “would” is built for imagining, not for holding. It creates homes you can never live in, touches you can never keep, futures that feel real until you open your eyes.
And that’s where it leaves me caught between what almost was and what never will be.
Because I can see it so clearly. Feel it so deeply. Believe in it so easily.
A life that makes sense but only in theory.
I want it to be real.
Not this version of you that only exists in passing moments. Not this almost, this maybe, this unfinished space between us. I want something that stays. Because the truth is your absence doesn’t teach me how to move on.
It just teaches me how to live with a love that has nowhere left to go except into a word that was never meant to come true.
