It took me a while to write this letter. I Won't Follow This letter is meant more for my own solace than for you. Everything between us has weighed heavily on me, and I’ve found it impossible to express this face-to-face. Perhaps you’ve noticed my moments of emotional absence, my retreat into other spaces. I’ve come to understand that the only way to cope with abandonment is to embrace it myself. I see how you light up around people who seem to synch with your energy, a rhythm I clearly don’t match. Our goals once sparkled like stars in alignment, but now they simply fade into a darkness deeper than night. Our paths have diverged, and I’ve realized I won’t force myself to follow yours. You didn’t lose me all at once. You just kept prioritizing things that made it impossible for me to stay. When we first met, you were remarkable, someone who inspired me profoundly. But over time, I watched as you transformed into someone I wouldn’t have fallen for. You started doing things I never imagined you capable of, things which, had I known from the beginning, would have kept me from offering my heart to you at all. What hurt most wasn’t the act of leaving; it was the realization that you’d left long before I ever chose to. You lied about so many things, blind to how deeply your dishonesty hurt me. Instead of addressing your feelings, you replaced me with people who you believed resonated with you better. Why couldn’t you have been honest about it? Why let my love for you wither away slowly and painfully? Time and time again, I tried to fix what was breaking between us, but how could I save something when you were already letting it fade into nothing? I would forgive things others would consider unforgivable because I thought love meant enduring every storm together. You taught me that love and disappointment could coexist, but the kind of love we had became increasingly one-sided. You didn’t shatter my heart all at once; instead, you chipped away at it until there was nothing left of it to guard. Despite everything, I stayed by your side, even when I had so many reasons to walk away. I would have gone through anything for us, fought the world if it meant saving what we had. But how could I keep fighting when you wouldn’t even fight for yourself? At some point, love stopped feeling precious to you. Its sanctity gave way to convenience. And somewhere along that path, I ceased feeling chosen by you. The resentment set in when I realized I was clinging to the image of who you were at the start instead of accepting the person you became. There’s a difference between mistakes and choices, and time and again, you made deliberate decisions, even with clear awareness of their gravity. All the while, I gave you understanding because I hoped that one day you’d offer me honesty in return. But it never came. You turned our love into something fragile, something that needed constant defense when it should have been my sanctuary. Even in silence, the gulf between us had so much to say, though I wonder if you ever truly heard it. Maybe one day you’ll understand what silence holds, if that day ever comes. For so long, I fought battles thinking they were ours to fight together, only to discover that the fight was with you. You made me question parts of myself that were never broken until you broke them. How blind I was, I defended you to people who could already see what I refused to admit. Maybe part of you believed I’d stay in spite of everything, perhaps there was even a version of myself that believed it too. Yet time has taught me that loving myself means drawing lines where my pain begins. It’s heartbreaking that the person who once seemed incapable of such harm became the very one who caused it. I didn’t leave because my love for you ran dry; on the contrary, I left because continuing to love you felt like betraying myself. And someday, you might ask yourself where it all fell apart; when exactly did you lose me? But the answer is simple: you lost me each time you chose indifference over care. I hope the life you've chosen is worth sacrificing what could have been ours. At one point, the thought of losing you felt unbearable. But now, I understand that staying would’ve been the thing to destroy me. You used to be where I felt safest. It shatters me that you ultimately became the very thing from which I had to flee.