Master of none

Tonight I saw something small on the internet. Just a note about going to a friend’s wedding. A normal thing. A happy thing. The kind of thing that probably means nothing to most people.

But it opened something in me.

And suddenly I found myself crying on the floor, thinking about love — about how badly I have wanted it, how deeply I have tried to hold onto it when it appeared in my life.

I have loved before. Truly. Completely. The kind of love where you start to imagine a life without even realizing you’re imagining it. Where someone slowly becomes part of the quiet structure of your days, until you can’t remember what it felt like before they were there.

And yet somehow, when I look back now, it feels like I’m standing here with empty hands.

Not because those moments weren’t real. They were. I gave everything I knew how to give. I loved with a whole heart, with hope, with tenderness, with the kind of belief that if you care deeply enough maybe it will stay.

But love is not something you can force into existence. You cannot make someone feel what they don’t feel. You cannot ask someone to love you just because your heart has chosen them.

Sometimes it simply ends.

Sometimes people walk away.

Sometimes the life you thought you were building quietly dissolves into something that was only meant to exist for a little while.

And maybe that’s just part of being alive. Maybe love isn’t something that belongs to us forever, but something we visit for a time before it moves on.

I’m learning how to be okay with that.

I’m learning how to sit with the quiet after everything has passed through my hands. I’m learning how to exist without the warmth of being someone’s person.

Because if I’m honest, I would rather be alone than force myself into something that isn’t real.

Still, there is a small, stubborn part of my heart that refuses to disappear completely.

The part that still wants to love someone deeply.

The part that still hopes someone might love me the same way.

The part that believes there are things about me — strange, imperfect, human things — that someone, somewhere, might one day see and cherish.

I know I’m not perfect. I know I have been messy and emotional and difficult in the ways that people sometimes are.

But I also know this:

I am not ugly.

I am not empty.

And I am not incapable of love.

There are pieces of me that are warm and curious and alive in ways I can’t quite explain. Pieces that someone, someday, might hold gently instead of letting them slip away.

So maybe tonight I am a little broken open. Maybe I am crying over things that are already long gone.

But I’m still here.

Still loving.

Still hoping.

Still refusing to settle for something that doesn’t feel like the real thing.