I used to understand what I had to offer, but I’ve since forgotten exactly what that is.

Now, I see a clichéd glimpse of a shell of a self that’s been worn down to its unpleasant looking nub through a lethal combination of too much and then not enough compromise.

I question why I left you. I cry with longing for your safe arms, but I can’t quite stifle the quiet thought that your return is my personal death. I don’t mean that—not how you must surely read it. I’m a better person with you, but maybe a better person is not who I am. Maybe this small person is who I need to be—for now. Until discomfort breeds growth and a better person to greet you at the pass months later, not years, is my hope.

In our greatest hour, I was always bracing for the fall. In the presence of others, I wondered if they bought what they saw. I tried to read on their faces whether I should trust what they appeared to: that our love was real, that we would last. I never did.

And so I preemptively jumped ship, without thinking, because it seemed inevitable that one of us would leave eventually. You or I, it didn’t really matter. We were too “rational” to hermetically seal things up after 25 years. You would go. It was a matter of time.

Of course now, when it’s too late, I realize I was self-fulfilling my fear of loss and discarding an irreplaceable love. I needed to know I didn’t need you. And as human beings often find the wrong end of the rifle in those dark hours, I learned through the irreversible pain that I couldn’t run from you. You are in me.

But no longer can I run to you either. I burned our home with us inside of it. Neither one of us lives there anymore.