To Someone I lost

To Someone I lost

By Nick AItoro

There are some people we lose without ever really losing our love for them, no matter how difficult the ending was.

You are one of those people for me.

For a long time, I believed that loving someone meant fighting for them no matter what. Staying. Forgiving. Trying harder. Being patient. Believing that if I loved deeply enough, I could somehow make things better.

What I have had to learn is that love does not always have that kind of power.

One of the hardest truths I have ever faced is that you can love someone with everything you have and still be unable to save them from their pain.

You can see it. You can understand parts of it. You can want more than anything to take some of it away.

But there are things inside another person that no one else can heal for them.

That has been the hardest part of losing you.

Because if loving you more could have fixed it, I would have. If patience could have fixed it, I would have waited. If understanding could have fixed it, I would have kept trying. And if I could have carried some of what hurt you, I would have done that too.

But some battles belong to the person fighting them.

That does not mean we stop caring. It means accepting that love cannot do the work another person has to do for themselves.

I hope that one day you stop seeing yourself through the eyes of people who never really saw you.

We all carry things that were said to us, done to us, or taken from us. If we carry them long enough, they can start to sound like our own voice.

But you do not have to remain the person your pain created or the person someone else decided you were.

Every day, you get to choose again.

You get to decide what you carry forward, what you leave behind, and who you want to become.

You are not trapped by yesterday.

Every morning is a new beginning. Another chance to become the person you choose to be, rather than the person someone else chose for you.

I hope you find your own voice again.

I hope you see what I saw.

Not someone perfect.

Not someone without faults or mistakes.

Just someone worth loving, worth choosing, and deserving of peace.

There are parts of losing you that I held onto because the pain felt like the last connection I had to you.

For a while, letting go of the hurt felt too much like letting go of you.

I understand now that they are not the same thing.

I can let the pain soften without pretending you never mattered. I can move forward without erasing what we had. And I can love you without needing our lives to look the way I once thought they would.

That may be the most important thing I want you to know.

I am not writing this to change anything.

I am not asking you to come back.

I am not trying to reopen a door that may need to stay closed.

I just need you to know that what I felt for you was real.

And some part of me will always love you.

I hope someday you are loved with the tenderness and fierceness you deserve.

I hope someone sees you clearly.

And maybe, before any of that happens, I hope you learn to give that same love, patience, and compassion to yourself.

As for me, I am learning that loving someone does not always mean holding onto them.

Sometimes love changes.

Sometimes it becomes gratitude.

Sometimes it becomes distance.

Sometimes it becomes quietly hoping that person finds the healing and happiness you once wished you could give them yourself.

That is where I am now.

I will always care about you.

I will always want good things for you.

And if life ever becomes too heavy and you truly need someone who remembers who you are beneath all of it, I will be here.

Not because I am waiting.

Not because I expect anything.

Simply because I loved you in a way that changed me.

And some loves do not disappear.

They just learn how to exist differently.

Wherever life takes you, I hope you find peace.

I hope you find yourself.

And I hope that every day you remember you still get to choose who you become.

Not the person your past chose for you.

Not the person your pain tried to make you.

Not the person someone else told you to be.

You.

The person you choose.

And I hope you always remember that there was someone who saw more in you than the pain you carried, more than your mistakes, and more than the things you sometimes believed about yourself.

I did.

I still do.

And I always will.