Eight Years

She said, “No, don’t die— I’ll be lost without you.” Her voice shook, and for a moment I believed every word. But now I watch from a distance, and it seems she’s already found someone else. Eight years— of memories packed away, of laughter, late-night conversations, and promises that felt permanent; of choosing her again and again, only to learn that someone she once couldn’t lose could still be left behind. She said she’d be lost without me, yet she found her way faster than I imagined. And maybe that’s what hurts most. Maybe the wound isn’t that she left— maybe it’s how easily life made room for my absence. How a name I carried like a heartbeat became something she no longer needed to say. How eight years folded in on themselves, shrinking into photographs, old messages buried beneath newer ones, and a version of us that exists nowhere except inside my memory. Tell me— where do forever promises go when forever ends without warning? Do they drift away like smoke, or settle somewhere unseen, waiting for the one who still remembers? Because I am still here, counting the seasons they once held, holding conversations that only echo back, trying to understand how something that shaped my life could become a chapter she closed so quietly. Meanwhile, insomnia keeps me company, wrapping me in its familiar arms through every sleepless night. So I carry the weight of everything we were, while she carries on. And maybe that’s the hardest truth of all— that eight years can mean everything to one heart, and become a memory to another. Yet every night, I still measure time by what we lost, and every morning, I wake to the same unanswered question: If I was once someone she couldn’t imagine living without, how did I become someone she could so easily leave behind?