There’s a version of me that stays, and for a long time I convinced myself she was the stronger one. She’s patient in a way that sounds admirable when you say it out loud, the kind of person who believes timing will eventually work itself out and that people grow into what they’re meant to be. She’s understanding in all the places that hurt her the most, always finding a reason, always giving a little more room, a little more time, a little more of herself.
From the outside, it might even look like love in its purest form. But from where she stands, it feels more like standing still. Like building a life around something that hasn’t fully chosen her, learning how to exist in the space between what is and what could be. And the hardest part is how easy it becomes to live there, to normalize the waiting, to tell yourself that almost is close enough to hold onto.
But there’s another version of me too, the one who leaves. Not because it didn’t matter, and not because the feelings disappeared, but because they didn’t. If anything, walking away happens while everything still feels very real, which is what makes it so difficult. She doesn’t get a clean ending or a moment that makes everything make sense. She just reaches a point where holding onto hope feels heavier than letting go, where staying starts to look less like love and more like slowly losing herself.
So she chooses to step away, even without certainty, even without closure. She chooses to believe that love shouldn’t feel like something you have to wait to be sure of. That it shouldn’t require you to shrink, or question, or wonder if one day it might finally meet you where you already are.
And that’s the part that lingers—the quiet grief in both directions. Because staying means continuing to pour into something that may never fully pour back, and leaving means accepting that the person you wanted isn’t the person you get to keep. There isn’t an easy version of this, no clean resolution that ties everything together in a way that feels fair.
It’s just the realization that you can’t hold onto someone and still hold onto yourself in the same way. That at some point, you have to choose between the life you’re waiting for and the one that’s actually in front of you.
And maybe that’s what growing into yourself really looks like, not becoming someone who doesn’t care, but becoming someone who understands that love, no matter how deep, isn’t meant to cost you your sense of self.
Because as much as I wish there were a way to have both, I’m starting to understand that there isn’t. That staying would mean losing parts of me I’ve worked too hard to find, and leaving means accepting a kind of loss I never wanted to face.
And maybe that’s what makes it so hard,
knowing that whichever way I turn, something I love doesn’t come with me.
Hang in there,
Emi Sue 🙂
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