I'd carry the weight of missing you

I am not afraid of healing. I am afraid that healing means erasing you. I'd carry the weight of missing you than live like you never mattered.

Maybe that’s the part people don’t understand.

They tell you that healing means letting go.

Moving on.

Leaving the past where it belongs.

And maybe they’re right in some ways.

But I never understood why healing has to mean pretending.

Pretending I didn’t care.

Pretending you weren’t important.

Pretending those moments meant nothing just because they didn’t last forever.

I don’t want to do that.

I don’t want to wake up one morning and realize that I’ve become so good at moving on that I can no longer remember what it felt like to love you.

Because whatever happened between us, whatever changed, whatever distance came between us…

You mattered.

And I don't want healing to rewrite that truth.

I want to heal from the pain, not from the memories.

There’s a difference.

I want to reach a place where thinking about you doesn’t break something inside me.

Where I can remember your voice without wondering why I can’t hear it anymore.

Where a familiar song can remind me of you without ruining my entire day.

Where I can smile at the memories instead of desperately trying to bury them.

Maybe that is what healing actually looks like.

Not forgetting.

Not erasing.

Just learning how to carry something precious without allowing its absence to destroy you.

Because some people leave your life but don't leave your story.

They become a chapter you don't read every day anymore, but you never tear the pages out.

And maybe you'll always be somewhere in mine.

Not as a wound.

Not as a regret.

Not as someone I am waiting helplessly for.

Just as someone who once made my world feel different.

Someone who made me dream a little bigger.

Someone whose presence changed something in me that cannot simply be undone by time.

And if one day I stop missing you the way I miss you now, I hope I don't mistake that peace for forgetting.

I hope I understand that the love was real even after the longing became quiet.

Because I don't need to keep hurting to prove that you mattered.

And I don't need to forget you to prove that I've healed.

Maybe someday I'll think of you and feel nothing heavy at all.

Just warmth.

A small smile.

A quiet I’m glad I got to know you.

And maybe that will be enough.

Until then, I'll keep learning how to live with the distance between what was and what is.

I'll keep becoming someone I'm proud of.

I'll keep walking forward.

But I won't erase the footprints behind me just because I'm no longer walking in that direction.

Some people are not meant to be forgotten.

They're meant to be remembered differently.

And if healing eventually means I can remember you without needing you…

then maybe that isn't erasing you after all.

Maybe that's the gentlest way of keeping you.