Seven years I had committed to her.
Bones deep.
I will still be here
while you become whoever you need to become.
And she was becoming.
I could see it —
the real painful unglamorous work
of someone trying to get well.
She would tell me there was something
she was working through,
something she was getting to,
and I believed her
because I could see the evidence of it
in the small ways
she was different
from who she had been.
So I stayed.
Not in complacency —
in faith.
Believing that one day
she would get to the other side of it
and finally
be able to turn toward me.
And then I stopped performing fine.
Let her see the exhaustion,
the frustration,
the weight of years of holding.
And she blamed me for it.
Retreated.
Made my honesty the crisis.
I didn't chase her.
Didn't apologize for being human.
I just said it.
Quietly.
Calmly.
Like a man who had finally
found the floor beneath himself:
This is where I am.
This is why.
And it will take real work to heal.
If that's too much for you —
you can leave.
Any time.
I mean that.
One of the times she left
I bought a boat.
Moved onto it.
Started going forward —
quietly,
without announcement —
still holding the door open for her,
still hoping she'd find her way
to the other side of whatever she was carrying
and walk through it.
She didn't.
So I cast off the lines
and left.