Fragments of Cassandra

You hurt me.

Not because you stopped loving me—

but because you let me believe  
you always would.

If I wasn't what you wanted,  
you should have left me untouched.

You should have let me  
carry my own loneliness,  
instead of replacing it  
with one that disguised itself
as you and me.

Why did you paint me  
a future  
you were never going to live in?

Why tell me  
"I love you,"  
if your heart  
was already rehearsing its goodbye?

You found me  
at the darkest place  
I had ever known.

You held my shaking hands.  
You reminded me  
that life could still be beautiful.  
You taught me  
that I was worthy of tenderness,  
worthy of being chosen,  
worthy of believing  
that maybe this time,  
love had finally found me.

You stitched together  
pieces of me  
that I had spent years  
trying to keep from falling apart.

Then,  
when I finally believed  
I was safe—

you became the wound.

And somehow,  
it hurt more  
than every heartbreak before you combined.

Because I survived them  
expecting pain.

I survived you  
expecting forever.

I never stopped choosing you.

Not once.

Not when things became difficult.  
Not when distance grew.  
Not when uncertainty found its way  
between us.

Every morning,  
I woke up  
and chose you again.

You...

You were the one  
who walked away.

You were the one  
who looked at everything  
we had built together—

and decided  
you didn't want to live there anymore.

Do you know  
what that does to someone?

To spend months  
building a home  
with another person,

only to watch them  
walk out the front door,

while you're still hanging  
pictures on the walls.

I would have fought for us.
I would have crossed oceans.

I would have carried  
every impossible conversation,  
every fear,  
every mile—

because I believed  
you were worth arriving to.

But somewhere along the way,
I became the only one  
walking toward our future.

You had already  
turned around.

And maybe  
that's what breaks me most.

Not that you stopped loving me.
Not even that you left.

It's that while I was learning  
to trust the world again—

you were teaching me  
to trust you.

You became the proof  
that love could heal.

Then you became the proof  
that it could destroy me  
even more completely  
than it ever had before.

I don't know  
how to hate someone  
who didn't mean  
to become my greatest heartbreak.

But intention  
doesn't erase impact.

You still broke me.

You still gave me  
a future to hold,

before quietly deciding  
you didn't want it anymore.

And I think  
that's the cruelest thing  
love can do.

Not leaving.
Making someone believe  
they've finally come home—

before reminding them  
they were only ever  
a place you stopped  
on the way to somewhere else.


Be'ahava,
The Mourning Bird