The Final Mirror. (Reflection)

He was a good man.
An emotionally stunted man, yes — but not cruel. Not careless. Just… afraid of being alone.
And I loved him. For years, I tried to be enough to fill that bottomless well of emptiness he carried.
But the truth? I was drowning in it.

I didn’t leave because I stopped caring. I left because I started slipping away — quietly, piece by piece, until there was nothing left of me but the woman holding everything together, while falling apart inside.

He talks to all his exes. Even the one who left him for another man.
They share three adult children, and yet, he still speaks to her.
But not me.
Not the one who stayed, who held space for him, who tried again and again to be the safe place he couldn’t be for himself.

And sometimes, I feel like the villain in the story — the one who walked away.
But I wasn’t leaving him. I was leaving the impossible job of healing a man who refused to do the work.
I was leaving the role of emotional stand-in for a self he never faced.

Maybe I was the last mirror he could bear to look into.

I wish him peace.
But I fought hard to find mine — and I won’t apologise for walking toward it.