Ached Heart

“I have never once felt the warmth of his gaze upon me. His eyes never carry love, tenderness or belongingness but only a hunger that unsettles me. Even when he looks at me, it is not affection that reflects back, but a stark shadow of lust and that hollowness disturbs me deeply.”

There comes a moment again and again, when I gather what little courage I have left and decide to walk away. I reach for the door quietly, believing this time I will leave without looking back. Yet somehow, he always finds a way to stop me, not because love has finally found its home in his heart, not because the thought of losing me terrifies him and definitely not because I am irreplaceable.

He stops me because there is no one else waiting to answer his calls, no one else willing to carry the weight of his loneliness, no one else eager enough to pour themselves into the endless vessel of his needs.

I was never his miracle, merely his convenience and perhaps that is the cruellest kind of affection – TO BE WANTED BUT NEVER CHOSEN.

I kept believing that love was patient, that if I stayed long enough, forgave enough, understood enough, loved enough, something inside him would bloom. So I offered him another chance, then another, until I lost count. I watered a garden that never intended to grow flowers.

Nothing changed. His habits softened for a day, perhaps two. His promise became prettier, but his heart remained untouched by mine, as though I had spent years knocking on a door that was never meant to open.

The tragedy is not that I no longer love him, but tragedy is that I once believed love itself could be earned if I gave enough of myself – my time, my tenderness, my patience, the quiet corners of my soul. Instead, I learned that you can pour your heart into every word you know, give someone every language your soul can speak, and still remain a stranger to their heart.

Some nights, a quieter fear visits me. I wonder if it was only him or if this is the role I am destined to play in every love story that bears my name.

“To be admired, but never cherished; to be desired, but never adored; to be someone’s comfort in dark, yet never their home in daylight.”

I fear becoming a woman whose body is remembered while her heart is forgotten; whose presence is convenient, but absence is survivable. These thoughts break something inside me far more deeply than his indifference ever could.

These questions linger long after he is gone, long after our conversation ends. Perhaps they are the only things that never leave.