A Letter To The Man She Lost

 Dear Chad,

I want to tell you a story.

Not about me. Not about us. But about a man who doesn't even realize he’s lost himself. A man who once held all the pieces of someone he loved in his hands, carefully putting them back together when she was falling apart—only to become the reason she keeps breaking now. A man who once fought to save someone else but can’t seem to fight for himself. A man who has spent so long running from his own reflection that he doesn’t even recognize the ghost staring back at him.

I want to tell you about a man who used to be her safe place. Her steady ground. The only person in her life who ever chose her when she needed it the most. The man who held her when her world was crumbling, who made her believe—for the first time—that maybe, just maybe, she was worth saving.

But that man is gone now.

And I don’t know if he’s ever coming back.

The worst part? I don’t think he even sees it. I don’t think he realizes just how far he’s drifted, how much of himself he’s let slip away. Or maybe he does, and he just doesn’t care. Maybe the weight of everything has made it easier for him to just stay numb. To keep avoiding. To keep deflecting. To pretend that nothing has changed when everything has—for him, for everyone around him.

You know who this reminds me of?

My mother.

She never saw what she was doing, either. Or maybe she did, and she just didn’t care. She let me love her with everything I had while giving me nothing in return. She let me break myself over and over, trying to be enough for her, trying to prove that I was worth something. I spent years begging for her love, for her to see me, for her to choose me.

She never did.

And one day, I saw it for what it was. I saw the truth I had been running from my entire life.

She was never going to change.

So I walked away.

But this man? He’s different, right?

Because she’s felt it before. She’s had his love. She’s seen the version of him that was capable of showing up. The version of him who held her up when she couldn’t stand on her own. The version of him who picked up her broken pieces and gently put them back in place.

So what the fuck happened to that man?

Where did he go?

And why the fuck is she still standing there, trying to hold on to someone who isn’t even reaching back?

Every night, she sits outside, alone, trying to make sense of it all. Writing about a man who once fought for love, for family, for something bigger than himself. A man who now just sits, waits, and lets everything slip through his fingers. She used to believe if she held on long enough, if she fought hard enough, she could pull him back. But how do you save someone who won’t even reach for the rope?

How many more times is she supposed to be the only one holding this together? To keep filling in the cracks, only for him to pretend they aren’t there at all?

She told him what she needed. She spelled it out. She didn’t make him guess. She didn’t leave room for doubt.

And still—NOTHING.

She poured herself into her writing, trying to make sense of the chaos, trying to find her own clarity. But deep down, she hoped—maybe, just maybe—if he saw her pain in black and white, if he read the truth—the truth that's always been right there in front of him—it would finally fucking sink in.

And he said he read it. Said he liked the ones that made him look good.

The ones that painted him as the soldier, the survivor.

But the ones where she told the truth? Where she bled onto the page, screaming for him to meet her halfway?

Those, he called "yelling."

Not honesty. Not pain. Not the raw truth of a woman trying to hold together a marriage with nothing but her bare hands and sheer willpower.

Just "yelling."

And that’s when she realized—he never really heard her at all.

It was never about the way she spoke. It was about how unwilling he was to listen, how much easier it was to dismiss her pain than to face it. Because if he ever truly heard her—if he actually let her words sink in—he’d have to admit the truth: that he wasn’t just giving up on himself. He was giving up on them.

So tell me.

Tell me, please.

What the fuck am I supposed to do?

Because I have been fighting for us for years.

And I don’t even know if you're still in the ring.

Because a fight isn’t really a fight

if only one person is throwing the punches.

And love isn’t really love if only one person is still holding on.