She kept telling herself he’d change.
That the guy who hurt her, who constantly snapped at her for no reason, who matched her tears with aggression, who made her feel like she was both too much and not enough at the same time — that wasn’t really him.
That couldn’t be him. That was just a temporary version of him. That was the darkness, the depression, twisting him, making him cruel. The real him was buried beneath that, waiting for the light, waiting for someone to hold on long enough to find him.
She saw the hurt nobody else noticed, the bruises beneath the anger, the scared little kid hiding behind it all. She fell in love with the idea of who he could be once the hurt faded, once the anger stopped, once someone finally stayed.
She clung to the good moments like oxygen, replaying them over and over, stacking them like proof against the nights she cried herself raw. She tried to convince herself — and the tiny scared little girl inside her — that she was worth it. Worth the heartbreak. Worth the chaos. Worth the endless hoping.
She stayed not just for him, but for her younger self, too.
The little girl who had been waiting forever for someone to stay, someone to love her, someone to choose her. Walking away felt like stabbing that little girl in the chest, stabbing her own heart, stabbing the part of her that had waited forever. She wanted him to be okay so badly that she convinced herself staying meant love.
But it was never healthy. Never.
The highs that followed the lows like oxygen after drowning. The nights spent replaying every word, every touch, every lie, every kiss — trying to make sense of how someone who swore they loved you could press the knife in deeper each time, watching you bleed and still calling it devotion. How love could taste like safety one moment, and deliberate cruelty the next. How the same hands that held you so tenderly could also be the ones to break you, over and over, as if shattering you was proof that you were theirs.
The chaos around him. The chaos inside her. Holding on with bleeding hands, convincing herself love meant endurance, that enough effort could rewrite the story. Wanting him to change. Wanting herself to be enough.
But the part of her that’s been waiting forever knows, in a way she can’t quite say yet, that this isn’t the story she thought it was.