And as I lay there in bed, staring into the dark, sleepless and restless, a flood of thoughts washed over me. I’d spent more time thinking of him in this one week of silence than he’d probably thought of me in the past month. The irony was cruel. Here I was, feeling the weight of every unspoken word, every unexpressed thought, while he held firm to his principles – principles that meant more than checking in, more than caring, more than seeing how I was coping through all this.
The silence said everything I didn’t want to hear. I thought that maybe, just maybe, he’d break the rules for a moment to reach out. But no. The space between us seemed to hold more meaning for him than my heart ever did.
It’s strange how empathy feels so heavy, a quiet burden, when it’s met with indifference. I have too much heart to be half-loved, too much feeling to be left hanging on threads of what could have been. And yet, I lay there, sleepless, holding onto my own empathy, and I wondered if that would ever be enough.