THE MOMENT I STOPPED GIVING MUCH..

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.