Ashes Don't Ask for Apologies
Dear Me,
You lit candles in a collapsing house and called it hope.
You stitched together silence and called it patience.
You were honest. You were soft.
You loved without holding back.
She couldn’t hold that love.
That doesn’t mean it wasn’t real.
That doesn’t mean you weren’t real.
You were not a fool for giving.
You were not weak for staying.
You were not wrong for believing.
Let her keep her performance.
Let her live with the choices she made.
You showed up.
You stayed true.
You loved hard, and now—you’re done apologizing for it.
You don’t owe her anything.
Not your silence. Not your rage. Not even your pain.
Let her wrap herself in performance.
Let her be generous to strangers and hollow in the mirror.
We’re not clinging to ghosts.
We’re not rereading what she never meant.
We’re not keeping relics of a love she couldn’t carry.
Let the version of you that loved her rest.
She doesn’t get to haunt your joy.
This isn’t grief. This is a ritual.
A reckoning.
A release.
From here forward: You rise.
Love,
Me
