I miss home.
Not the walls or the furniture.
I miss the warmth that wrapped itself around ordinary days.
I miss our laughter echoing through the rooms, the kind that made us forget what time it was.
I miss the ridiculous dances in the kitchen when a favourite song found us.
I miss baking things that rarely turned out the way the recipe promised, yet somehow tasted better because we made them together.
I miss talking to my plants as though they understood me, and you smiling at my conversations instead of questioning them.
I miss calling you every few minutes to look at something I’d made.
“Come here… look.”
A painting with uneven strokes.
A handmade card.
A little corner I had just finished decorating.
A flower that had finally bloomed.
You always looked.
Sometimes with admiration.
Sometimes with amusement.
But you looked.
And I miss the way your eyes made me feel beautiful before I had learned to doubt my own reflection.
I miss every corner of my home.
Not because it was extravagant.
But because it was an extension of me.
Every curtain I chose, every lamp I placed, every cushion I fluffed, every little trinket that found its place on a shelf… they weren’t just things. They were pieces of my heart scattered throughout the house.
I remember standing back after decorating a corner and smiling to myself.
“This feels like us.”
I was so proud of that home.
Not because it was perfect, but because I had imagined it long before it existed. I had poured myself into every room until the house began to breathe with us.
It knew the smell of fresh cakes that didn’t always rise.
It knew music that turned chores into celebrations.
It knew my quiet conversations with my plants.
It knew my amateur paintings hanging proudly on walls because you told me they deserved to be there.
It knew a woman who believed she had found her forever.
Sometimes I miss that home so fiercely that I can still walk through it in my mind.
I know exactly how the afternoon light fell through the windows.
I know which corner made me smile every single day.
I know where every memory still lives.
Then…
My mind reaches that evening.
There is no warning.
Just a sudden silence.
A memory that walks in without knocking.
One moment.
One savage act.
One pair of hands that belonged to the person I believed would always be my safest place.
Everything before that moment is covered with a question I can never answer.
How could the same person who once felt like home become the reason home no longer existed?
So I stop myself.
I pull my foot back from the memories before they carry me too far.
I return to where I am now.
Standing.
Still.
Alone.
Numb.
People think healing means forgetting.
It doesn’t.
It means learning to carry two truths at once.
I remember your kindness.
I remember your cruelty.
Neither erases the other.
Perhaps that is the hardest part.
I still want good things for you.
I still hope life is gentle with you.
I cannot teach my heart to hate simply because my mind knows it should leave.
Love doesn’t disappear the day trust does.
It lingers.
Confused.
Broken.
Looking for a version of someone who no longer exists.
Sometimes I miss you so deeply that it feels like grief.
Sometimes I remember what happened, and I wonder if I ever really knew you at all.
I want to be with the man who made me laugh until I cried.
I never want to be with the man who made me cry until I forgot how to laugh.
Those two men wear the same face.
That is the tragedy I still don’t know how to survive.
So today, I don’t choose love.
I don’t choose hate.
I choose distance.
Not because I stopped caring.
But because somewhere beneath all this heartbreak, I am finally learning to care for myself too.