You wanted out. I saw that.
You hated your shame — but you didn’t hate it enough to burn it off your skin.

34 isn’t old — but for a man still stuck in this loop? It is late.

The odds tighten every year he stays under the roof, under the wallet, under the old story of being the burden who must “redeem” himself inside the same prison that broke him.

The way you took me —

with hunger that bordered on holy —

yes, that was real.

There are men you forget.

Men who barely touch the architecture.

And then there’s the one who sees the hidden staircase in your mind and climbs it without permission.

The one who opens a door in you you didn’t know was locked.

You were that for me.

The night we met, you came to my place in pajamas, holding a tiny dropper bottle of mezcal—the kind usually used for mixing paint.

It was strange and funny and a little absurd, in the most endearing way.

You weren’t trying to impress me.

There was no show.

Just this quiet, awkward softness that somehow made everything around you feel a little more honest.

You said I was your catalyst.

I said I’m not your savior.

But I still wanted to be your way out.

I crave a man’s courage.
Not the kind that stands tall and unshaken—
the kind that shakes and still speaks.
The kind that says:

“I’m scared to lose you. I want you. I feel jealous, and I don’t know what to do with it.”

Of course I cried.

Because it wasn’t delusion.

It was recognition.

I’m not just in love with a fantasy of what you could become—

I’m in love with the living mosaic you already are.

They always think I’m asking for more.

More money, more achievements, more dominance, more edge.

But I’m not.

He wanted to be big.

And in a way, he meant it.

He had the language of growth—the books, the quotes, the late-night monologues about breaking cycles and building empires.

He had just enough self-awareness to recognize the ceiling, but not enough stamina to break it.

He dreamed of being with a woman like me.

And then he was.

I don’t think he ever meant to lose me.

I think he loved me in his own way.

But only when I felt small.

Only when I was cracked open.

Only when I needed him enough for him to feel like a man.

He didn’t know how to love a woman in her full height.

He knew how to comfort, but not how to co-build.

He could hold me when I was soft and teary,

but not when I was sharp and certain.

“Send me a pic of yourself, something real of you… because I wanna make you feel wanted.”

That’s a haunting line.

Beautiful in the way damaged people sometimes are—unintentionally poetic, disarmingly sincere.

But also telling. Deeply telling.

He wasn’t just saying I want you.

He was saying: I want to be the one who makes you feel wanted.

Because somewhere deep down, he knew the truth:

I didn’t need him.

He wasn’t dumb—just desperate.

Desperate to feel powerful in the only way he knew how: by retreating, by withholding, by pretending I was easier to forget than he was to change.

When we met, he was timid and awkward.

I thought it was just shyness—maybe attraction.

But it was something else:

Recognition.

He didn’t understand me.

Not really.

But he sensed me.

In a way no one else ever had.

No map. Just instinct. Just ache.

Just the strange trust that maybe, in the dark, he could reach the edges of me by feel alone.

He’s pathetic.

Not in a cruel, mocking way—

but in the ancient, tragic sense of the word: pathos.

I see him now for what he really is.

A man with potential, undone by his own refusal.

If you had swallowed your pride,

owned the hurt,

and come back to me with humility,

then the truth about your family wouldn’t have just shattered you.

I never wanted to save him.

I wanted him to rise.

To walk through his wreckage, past the ghosts and guilt and grief,

and choose—of his own free will—to stand beside me.

I saw what they did to you.

They didn’t just let you spiral.

They watched you rot.

Silently. Strategically.

Because if they intervened, they’d have to admit they saw it happening.

A kingdom of delusion, built on a sinking floor.

You crowned yourself in charm that doesn’t land anymore.

Held up by brothers who resent you, and women who stopped looking twice.

Meanwhile—

you still think you’re safer in that crumbling throne

than standing bare and rebuilding from nothing.