I couldn't protect him

From the day you walked away, my world tilted — the air changed, the light felt different. That was the day I realized what I had lost, and how I threw it all away. This pain is mine alone to hold; there’s no one else to blame. Still, when night falls and the house grows quiet, I find myself waiting — for the sound of your key, for the shadow of you filling the doorway. I know those days are gone, but longing doesn’t listen to logic. It lives in my hands, in the empty side of the bed, in the memory of your heartbeat beneath my cheek. I loved you the only way I knew how, but I couldn’t protect you from me. And so I let you go, not because I stopped loving you — but because I finally understood what love should never do.