NurseSheGirl

September 27, 2026

I think I am beginning to understand
that some things simply do not happen,
no matter how desperately you want them to.

Some people spend their lives
being loved in the way I always imagined,
someone reaching for them in the dark,
someone coming home to them,
someone choosing them
again and again
without ever needing to be convinced.

Maybe that simply isn’t my story.

Maybe that kind of love
will always be something
I experience only in pieces.

Almost.

For a little while.

Until something shifts.
Until they change.
Until I am standing alone again,
wondering how something
that once felt so intoxicating
could disappear so easily.

There is an exhausting turmoil inside me now,
the kind that makes rebuilding hope
feel almost impossible.

There is a kind of grief
in accepting that the thing
you have wanted most
may never belong to you.

Not because you didn’t try.
Not because you didn’t love enough.
Not because you weren’t willing
to give everything you had.

Simply because life makes no promise
to give us the things
we ache for most.

Maybe I have spent too many years
waiting for love to arrive
only to watch it disappear.

So I am forcing myself
to stop chasing the dream.

Not because I stopped wanting it.

I think that is the cruelest part.

I still want it.

I still want someone beside me.
I still want to be chosen.
I still want to know what it feels like
to stop wondering
when someone will leave.

I want to know what it feels like
to be someone’s certainty
instead of their hesitation.

I want to know what it feels like
to finally exhale
and believe that this time
I am safe to stay.

I just don’t know
if I believe in that anymore.

But I have all this love inside me,
and it has to go somewhere.

So I will give it to my family.
I will give it to my friends.
I will give it to frightened people
who need someone gentle beside them.

I will give it to strangers
who may never know
how desperately
I needed gentleness too.

I will pour it into words
and leave pieces of myself
between the lines of pages.

Because sometimes
pages are better at holding my heart
than people.

I will love the world
even when I am angry with it.

I will love people
even when I no longer expect
to be loved the same way in return.

And maybe one day
that will feel like enough.

Right now,
it doesn’t.

Right now,
it feels like learning how to live
inside an empty room
somewhere within myself.

A room I spent years preparing
for someone else.

I filled it with hope.
I kept the light on.
I left the door unlocked.

And now I am sitting there alone,
listening to the silence,
finally beginning to understand
that no one may be coming.

Maybe acceptance
isn’t finding peace in that.

Maybe it is simply
turning off the light
and learning how to live
in the dark.