Boots & Curls

I don’t think I feel truly chosen.

And I hate admitting that. Because it’s not some huge blowout or betrayal this time. It’s the little things. Quiet comments. Subtle shifts. Things I might’ve brushed off a few months ago, but now… they echo.

We were talking about my new apartment…the one I just got approved for. I mentioned I signed a one-year lease. We’ve both talked about how this space was supposed to be temporary. A breath. A reset. And when I said that, his response was, “That’s not bad. In a year, you can move to a bigger, nicer place.”

I know those words don’t sound like a punch, but they landed like one. Because to me, I thought a year from now we’d be working toward something together again. One and two. Not one here and one there and just… new leases, new places, new futures separately. I didn’t hear we. I heard you.

Same thing when we were watching that show, and I jokingly said I’d be the naked woman watering plants in 50 years. And he said, “No, you’ll have a caretaker.”

I stayed quiet, but it stung. Because if the roles were reversed, I know what I’d have said.

Something like: “Well, I’ll be there to make sure you don’t drown the cactus, pants or no pants.”

It’s small. But it’s not.

He says I overthink.

But “you’re overthinking” without reassurance is just a pretty way to say “shut fuck up.”

And then there was Friday.

We argued. Again.

I stayed calm. He got loud. Blocked the door. Told me, “If that’s how you feel, then leave.”

So I did. I started packing quietly, no drama.

And only then did I hear it: “I love you so much.”

“You’re the only good in my life.”

Suddenly, there were tears. Gentle hands.

Suddenly, I mattered again.

And that’s when it hit me:

I don’t want to be loved in the apology.

I want to be loved in the everyday.

Because when I write him notes, when I doodle little things and draw stupid shit and try to make him smile…when I show him what an “everything shower” is or offer to rub his back after a long day…it’s not because I fucked up. It’s not some performance of guilt or desperation. I do those things because I love him.

I don’t want flowers after a fight.

I want presence when things are peaceful.

I want him to open the truck door for me not because I cried last night, but because he wants to.

I want him to walk beside me, not in front me when I’m pulling away or he thinks he’s got me reeled in again.

I want the handholding, the looking over at me like I’m the only person on the damn planet…even when I’m just eating fries and wearing no makeup.

I want it to feel like I’m in someone’s future. Not just in their guilt.

Maybe the conclusion I’m coming to is this:

I’ve been fighting so hard to stay in something that I haven’t felt truly safe in for a long time.

And maybe what scares me most is that I’m starting to fall out of love.

Not in an angry, I-hate-you kind of way.

But in that soft, slow, terrifying way where I realize I might finally be letting go…not for his peace, but for mine.

Because deep down, I know I’ll never be the woman he wants to proudly show off to his family.

I’ll never be the girl his friends root for, or the one he’s eager to post a picture with, to tell the world, “this is her.”

My original plan was get healthy again, get skinny and pretty again, show I don’t need him and be on my own and do my own thing and THEN I’d be good enough for those things.

But it hit me yesterday in the pool that it will never be good enough. Like the stupid saying goes, “if you can’t love me at my worst, you don’t deserve my best.” And granted, he has definitely seen my worse and stuck around…but it was never fully in. I was never fully loved. I was loved in the shadows, kept as a secret, even from his little secret I was a secret. So I don’t even know if I should give him that grace. Because I didn’t just love him within those four walls, I was proud to bring him around my family, would have loved him to meet my new friends, loved to take photos and post more for my social media.

And it’s not bitterness saying that—it’s acceptance.

These last three weeks here, in this new space, sleeping next to him, waking up beside him…

they didn’t erase that thought. They cemented it.

And as much as that should hurt, there’s something morbidly peaceful about it.

Like I’ve stopped waiting for a place I was never going to be invited into.

And I’m terrified that the “new beginning” he talks about…

was only meant for him.

So no, my best self that I want so badly still won’t be good enough. And that’s ok. It will be for someone one day.