Epilogue: It Was Always Him — But Mostly, It Was Me

For the ones who read between the lines. This wasn’t meant to be found by many — just by the right ones.

Maybe it sounded like there were many.
A boy I cried for at 3AM.
A love I treated like a detour.
A choice between duty and desire.
A question I kept asking:
Did I choose survival — or did I just settle?

But if you read between the pauses,
trace the ache beneath the mess,
you’d find —
it was always him.

The same story,
told in the voice of every version of me
who tried to make sense of leaving,
or being left.

The same love
I thought I had to earn,
until it broke me quiet.
Until I couldn’t be “the strong one” anymore.
Until I realized:
the bloom wasn’t in the loving —
it was in the letting go.

And maybe that’s what this whole journey was:
Not a map of many heartbreaks,
but a slow unraveling of one —
drawn across timelines,
stitched together by regret,
resilience,
and the ache of choosing myself too late
but just in time.

I kept writing about him.
But really —
I was trying to find my way back to me. - MESSY E.

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