Dear Name Redacted | After The Lights Went Out

Dear Name Redacted,

Lately, I write primarily about moving forward,

and less about you,

not because my feelings are fully gone,

but because I needed to stop being consumed by you.

There was a season

when I bled in the open.

When my words carried the pain

I had no place to put.

You watched.

You consumed every bit of it—

my pain,

my thoughts,

my inner world offered without a gate.

You had access to the most intimate thoughts

without ever making contact.

You stayed emotionally connected

without ever stepping toward me.

While you performed intimacy with another.

I don’t say that with anger.

It’s just what was.

And at some point—

last month, maybe—

I turned off the light.

Not the memory.

Not the tenderness.

Just the exposure.

I stopped offering my wound

as a place you could linger.

Stopped letting my grief

be something you could witness

without having to care.

What remains now

stays quieter.

Untouched.

Unobserved. Mine to nurture and care for.

I am open—to what is good,

to what is real,

to what meets me fully.

And I am choosing to document that journey here.

But this part—

this final mending of what happened with you—

no longer happens on a stage

with the spotlight set just for you.

~ K