I haven’t spoken to him in weeks (not since our last argument) but yesterday, I saw his Instagram story. It was in black and white, which caught me off guard because he rarely posts anything in that filter. Even the significance of the filter felt deliberate, as if it was meant to tell a story he wasn’t ready to say outright. His face looked familiar, scruffy… the kind of scruffy that used to make me smile whenever I saw him. But this time, there was no joy in it. He was talking about how he likes this scruffy look, how he wants to get rid of his Instagram page, and how he’s starting fresh. That’s all he said, but the way he said it felt chaotic, abrupt, and heavy with something unsaid.

It stirred something in me. Not concern exactly. I’ve let go of caring about his words, especially with how we’ve left things, but he was someone who once had my heart. Someone who consumed my thoughts and my life in so many ways. It’s hard not to wonder what’s really going on behind that black-and-white filter, what’s buried inside the words he shared with Instagram.

But then again, maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s just another reminder of how far we’ve fallen, how different things are now. And yet, here I am, writing about him again, trying to make sense of it all.

My heart aches in ways I cannot fully articulate, for all that we could have been and for all that we will never be. Where we are now feels so broken, so unfixable, yet it’s impossible not to look at him and see the ghost of what once was. As much as my heart hurts now, there are moments when I catch a glimpse of his face, and it pulls me back to the beginning. Back to when every conversation with him was like breathing fresh air after suffocating. Back to when his presence felt electric, satisfying, and utterly magnetic.

In the beginning, I wanted nothing more than to be one with him. To merge my life with his in every possible way, emotionally, intimately, spiritually. I truly thought we were weaving something beautiful together, but somewhere along the way, the threads unraveled. The light that once radiated from our connection shut off so violently, leaving me in a darkness I didn’t see coming. It wasn’t sudden, it was insidious, growing darker with every argument disguised as intimacy.

He went from being so warm, so tender, to someone cold and detached, someone who dismissed my emotions as if they were inconsequential. I keep asking myself what changed. Was it him? Was it me? I don’t know. What I do know is that he stopped being the sunshine in my life and became a shadow? A leech feeding on the best parts of me, leaving me drained and confused.

I loved him. Oh my goodness, I loved him with every part of me. And my tears now are for that love, for how perfect it felt at the start, and for how far we’ve fallen. I wanted to keep him in my life as a friend, but friends don’t make you feel like this. Friends don’t bring darkness into your life; they bring light. My real friends are my safe spaces, our conversations refresh me, uplift me. But with him, there’s only tension, frustration, and a constant sense of impending argument.

I once thought we were the same person (soulmates in every sense of the word) but now I see how different we are. Maybe we were always different, and I just couldn’t see it. I went from wanting him to be my everything, to just wanting him to be something, anything in my life. But even that proved impossible.

And then there was the baby. Finding out we had created life together was terrifying and overwhelming, but also so unbelievably beautiful. I truly believed that baby was made from something pure, something new, something fresh and full of potential, just like us in the beginning. I thought the baby could have been the embodiment of the love I once felt for him, of the hope I had for us.

But losing that baby shattered something deep inside of me. It hurt in ways I still can’t fully articulate, because it wasn’t just the loss of the baby, it was the loss of everything I thought we could have been. And the hardest part is knowing that this loss didn’t seem to weigh on him the way it weighed on me.

Even now, it’s hard not to think about that baby and what could have been… the life we could have shared together, the family we might have become. From time to time, the thought creeps in, uninvited but relentless, and it pulls at my heartstrings with a painful mix of what-ifs and could-have-beens.

I am heartbroken, truly heartbroken, because it all felt so perfect once. It didn’t need fixing or intervention; it just was. And yet, here we are. I don’t want to assign blame, but I can’t shake the feeling that he never wanted me to love him the way I did. He wanted my energy, my warmth, my intimacy, but not my heart. He took all that I offered and left me with nothing but confusion and pain.

Lover, friend, or foe. It’s like grieving the death of something beautiful. I’m letting go now, not because I want to, but because I have to. And even as I walk away, a part of me will always wonder what we could have been if only he had chosen me the way I chose him.