The Best Kind of Goodbye
Looking back through the luminous, clarifying lens of hindsight, I cringe at myself and my behavior.

Clinging on to his scattered breadcrumbs, his easy and free-flowing “I love you”s — a drug to my ears having grown up with so few verbal and physical displays of affection.

I didn’t think I could do any better than him. I didn’t think I had any alternatives, even as the illusion began to crack. Even as the red flags piled high beneath my feet.

The overarching emotion?

Fear.

Fear of loss. Of change. Of severing a source of comfort and companionship. Of having to start over, once again, as a flawed and lonely human being scrambling for yet another intimate connection.

A part of me believed I didn’t deserve that kind of connection. A part large enough to drive me toward the insane decision to stay. To sabotage my future. To delay the inevitable end.

That’s why I fought to stay bound to a man who had no place in my life.

Until finally, he forced me to wake up. I was too much of a coward to wake myself, after all.

And sometimes, that slap in the face feels like nothing. No blaring alarm, no lightbulb moment, no grand epiphany.

Sometimes, it just feels like fading. Ghosting. Disappearing.
['Sybil Chan']
['Breakups', 'Life Lessons', 'Relationships', 'Love', 'Self Love']