The tide didn\'t go out all at once. It was a slow retreat of the shoreline, inch by inch, back into the deep. I looked at my hands, calloused from holding ropes that no one else was pulling, and I simply... let go.
I didn\'t make a sound. There was no slamming door, no scorched earth, just a soft click in the center of my chest. The heavy machinery of \"always being there\" ground to a halt, the gears finally cooling.
I began to measure my breath instead of measuring your moods. I stopped translating your silence into a language I had to apologize for.
The world did not end. The sky stayed its usual shade of bruised blue. But for the first time in years, I looked at the garden of my own life and realized I had been carrying water to everyone’s field but my own.
I still have love, tucked away like a small, folded map. But I am no longer the bridge. I am the person standing on the bank, watching the water flow by, wondering why I ever thought I had to hold back the river.