I used to be afraid of losing everything.
Now I know what that actually feels like.

I’ve said goodbye to a child I never got to hold.
I’ve signed papers that ended a life I thought would last forever.
I’ve walked away from a home that once held all my plans and promises.

There’s a kind of silence that comes after that.
When the worst has already happened,
and you’re still here, breathing in a life you didn’t choose.

So I stayed alone.

Not because I couldn’t love,
but because I needed to learn how to live
inside the quiet that was left behind
after loving the wrong person.

For two years, I rebuilt myself in pieces.

Slow mornings.
Long nights.

Learning who I was without everything I had lost.

And then I chose to love again.

Not recklessly.
Not blindly.

But willingly.

I let someone in
when it would have been easier to stay guarded.

I softened in places that had every reason to stay closed.

But sometimes the hardest truth isn’t loss.
It’s being almost chosen.

It’s giving your heart
and realizing it isn’t being held the same way in return.

And somehow, that kind of heartbreak
echoes just as loudly as everything that came before it.

I am not the person I was.
I don’t have the life I imagined.

But I am still here.

I still choose to feel.
I still choose to hope.

I believe that one day,
I won’t have to question if I’m fully chosen.

Until then, I keep going.

Not because it’s easy,
but because I know now that I can.

One day at a time.

(I survived losing everything, but I wasn’t prepared for what it meant to be almost chosen.)