For the first time in a long while, I didn't fill it with my desperate words. I didn't try to break it. I let it echo out of total respect. I let it speak back to me. 

There were no more late-night waiting. No more plans to fix something that wasn't mine to fix. Instead... I turned to prayer.

I didn't know what else to do with this pain that's ripping me apart. 

"Please let her be okay."

I stopped checking my phone first thing in the morning. But sometimes, I started again. It was like a muscle memory to how it once was, rolling out of my bed, to send her a sweet 'goodmorning', now it's silence. 

It was like hope and grief were taking turns pretending to be each other. I'd open the app, click her name at the top of my messages, then lock the screen again without typing. 

Some days, I stared at our old texts, listened to her old voice messages that I've always saved, as if they were podcasts. Other days... I couldn't even look at them, it was painful.

The playlists I made for her still lived on my phone, I couldn't bring myself to delete it.

And then one night... Without meaning to, I played it on shuffle. The song that started playing was hers... 'Seasons'... The one she used to hum when she was folding laundry, on a daily walk to see her favourite cat, or when she couldn't sleep.

The first melody played, and I just... froze. That song didn't just sound like her. It felt like her. I sat there with my eyes closed, holding the plushie I bought for her tightly, letting the song play through the pain.

The room was still... The only movement was my heart beating, and my tears falling down.

A memory came rushing in without warning. That one night she told me about her childhood... the one with the loud cousins coming over, and the silence she learned to carry alone. I remembered how she said she hated asking for help because it never ends well. How she said being strong meant staying quiet.

And there I was... Flooding her quiet, memories, with all my noise.

Again.

I think I'm starting to understand now.

I thought I was showing love. I thought staying up for her, messaging her every night, waiting, reaching, was what "being there" meant.

But maybe it wasn't

Maybe it was just me not knowing how to sit still. How to give space without feeling like I was being pushed away. I wanted so badly to hold her together, that I didn't notice she was holding herself together just fine... She just needed the room to do it.

I confused presence with pressure.

I confused patience with persistence. 

I confused my fear with love.

I think that's the part that hurts the most.

I've stopped trying to fix everything.

There's no solution to grief, no backspace for what I said, no shortcuts.

But what I can do now... Is honor what we were... because no matter how this ends,

We mattered.

We were real.

And for a little while, we found each other in a world that didn't always make sense.

I've been thinking about reaching out. Not to restart anything, not to beg, but to check in, gently and quietly.

Not for my sake, but for hers.

Not because I want her back... but because I want her to be okay, even if I'm no longer a part of what "okay" looks like for her.

I've spent so long trying to be heard... Now, all I want is to learn how to listen.

I'm preparing myself. To face whatever her words will be. To hear them with grace, to not interrupt, to not overthink, to not make it about me.

Even if she says goodbye again, this time... For real...

I'll meet her there with softness, even if I want a chance.

Because that's what I should've done all along.