The one that got away (and never really left)

aka: how do you move on when you’re still haunted?

We all have that one.

The one we fell for like fools in a free fall.

No parachute. No plan. Just the dizzy, delusional, delicious hope that this was it.

The great love. The one we’d tell stories about. The one that cracked us open and made everything before it look like a dress rehearsal.

And then… they left.

Maybe not all at once. Maybe slowly.

Maybe they ghosted. Maybe they said it wasn’t the right time. Maybe they promised they’d come back.

But in the end, they left, and we stayed.

Stuck in the space they used to occupy.

Haunted by memories. By songs. By phantom touches and texts we still read like scripture.

And here’s the cruelest part: They don’t even have to be in our lives anymore to still be in our heads.

So when someone new comes along, someone good, someone kind, someone who sees us without the chaos, we hesitate. We hear I love you from them and flinch.

Because somewhere in the back of our mind, we’re still waiting for them.

The one that got away. The one we’ve turned into a myth.

The one who could return just when we finally feel safe again; to test us, tempt us, or worse… ruin the soft, steady love we almost let ourselves believe in.

So we sabotage.

We stay half-in, half-out.

We love carefully. Quietly.

Because we fear committing to someone who loves us… only to end up abandoned again.

We fear breaking a good heart the way ours was once broken, and living with the guilt and the grief.

It’s a tragic kind of math:

How many hearts do we break just trying to protect our own?

And at what point does protection become isolation?

Maybe the real heartbreak isn’t when someone leaves.

Maybe it’s when we stop letting ourselves be loved, because we’re still holding space for a ghost.