It had been 1,023 days since Eli left. Not that I was counting. Or maybe I was—because when your life feels like a silent, endless room with no windows, the days become your only anchor.
Eli didn’t leave with anger or shouting. Just a note, fragile as glass, left on my nightstand:
“I love you. But I’m breaking too. I need to save myself now.”
Then he disappeared, swallowed by distance and silence.
I understood. Sometimes love isn’t enough. Sometimes it’s the last thing to break. But understanding never stopped the ache hollowing me out.
For years, I lived trapped inside a dark room in my mind—no windows, no doors, just shadows pressing close. I memorized every crack in the walls, every faded stain on the ceiling. But I never found a way out.
I tried therapy. Took pills I hated but needed. Smiled at people who never asked how I really was. Inside, the silence screamed.
Eli was the only person who truly saw me. When I told him my mind felt like a windowless room, he didn’t turn away. Instead, he said he’d sit with me in the dark, candle in hand. For a while, he did.
We didn’t say “I love you” every day, but love lived in quiet moments—sharing tea on cold mornings, slipping poems into notebooks, walking side by side in silence full of meaning.
Then one day, he had to leave. His mother got a job far away. He promised to keep in touch. For weeks, his messages were steady. Then, slowly, the calls stopped. The notes dried up. The silence returned, but this time it was louder than ever.
I was left holding memories like ghosts. Every corner of my apartment whispered his name. Every song we loved became unbearable noise.
I thought I lost him. But the pain wasn’t only because of him—it was losing the only person who held the key to the windows in my mind.
Then, one cold night at 2:46 a.m., my phone buzzed. His name lit up the screen: Eli.
My breath caught. I told myself it was a mistake. A wrong number. A hacked phone.
But the message was real:
“I know I don’t deserve to text you. But I just needed to say this once.”
The room inside me shifted. Not wide open. Just enough to let in a breath of air I hadn’t felt in years.
Another message came:
“I never stopped caring. I just stopped believing I could help you. And that destroyed me.”
He remembered.
He said he’d seen a painting in a gallery—a girl trapped in a windowless room swallowed by shadows, but with a chair and a candle burning beside it. He said the moment he saw it, he thought of me. He said he stood there for a long time, crying, because it was like staring into a memory that never stopped aching.
He knew it was me.
I stared at my phone for hours, tears blurring my vision. My fingers trembled above the keyboard. I wanted to reach out, to pull him back. But I was scared—scared he was a ghost, that I might vanish with him.
Finally, I typed:
“The candle’s still burning. The room is still there, but it’s quieter now. I kept going, even when it felt like all I had left was silence. Thank you. You mattered. You still do.”
He replied quickly:
“That’s all I needed to hear. Thank you for keeping the candle lit.”
We didn’t fall back in love. That kind of love—the urgent, world-changing kind—doesn’t always return. But we talked—slowly, carefully—two broken people learning to build something new from ruins. Not lovers. Not strangers. Just two human hearts still beating in the same quiet rhythm.
He told me about therapy, how he learned to sit in his own darkness without running away. How he missed me every day. How he wished he’d stayed—not to fix me, but to hold space.
I told him about the nights I stayed awake, afraid to breathe, but still fighting to be here. How I learned to speak gently to myself. How I learned that surviving was also a form of love.
Sometimes healing isn’t about grand gestures or perfect endings.
It’s about being seen. Really seen.
And even if love doesn’t return the same way, the memory of it—that flame in the windowless room—can remind you that you’re still alive.
That you’re worthy.
Sometimes, one unexpected message at 2:46 a.m. can change everything.
The room inside my mind still exists.
But now it has windows.
And a candle burns on the sill.
Not because someone else lit it—but because I learned how to hold the flame.
And over time, the windows became clearer. I started opening the blinds in the mornings. Letting in sunlight. Walking outside. Not for anyone else—just for me.
There were days I still cried. Days I slipped back into the room and curled up in the corner. But I began to understand that healing is not linear. Grief doesn’t leave—it changes shape. Sometimes, it sits beside you quietly. Sometimes, it stabs again like the first day. But I had learned to breathe through it. To let it pass like weather.
Eli and I still talk sometimes. A message on a random evening. A photo. A memory. We don’t say the things we used to. But we say something equally sacred:
“I’m still here.”
“I hope you’re okay.”
“You matter.”
Love, I’ve learned, isn’t always about staying. Sometimes it’s about showing up in small, quiet ways. It’s about helping someone remember who they are when they forget. And sometimes, when they’re ready, it’s about stepping back and letting them grow.
I don’t know if I’ll fall in love again. Maybe I will. Maybe I already have—with life, with mornings, with soft music, with my own reflection in the mirror.
All I know is: I made it. I didn’t think I would, but I did.
And that’s enough.
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The End
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