I Have to Move On

I Have to Move On

I know they say
I shouldn’t rush this.

That grief has its own clock.
That the heart needs time
to catch up with what the mind
already knows.

But I am tired.

I am so fucking tired.

I don’t want to miss you anymore.

I don’t want to wake up
and have you be the first thing
my heart remembers
before my brain remembers
that we’re over.

I don’t want the memories to still make me smile.

I don’t want the bad ones to still make me angry.

I don’t want to remember the betrayal
and feel that familiar ache, of how could you?

Because the truth is

we hurt each other.

God, we really hurt each other.

And that is the part
I don’t know what to do with.

Because you weren’t just
someone who hurt me.

You were someone I loved.

Someone I trusted.

Someone who knew me
before all of this.

Someone who knew
the little things.

The stupid things.

The things nobody else would understand.

And I knew yours too.

We knew each other.

And somehow, knowing each other so well
also meant knowing, exactly where to hurt.

And we did.

Sometimes deliberately.

Sometimes carelessly.

Sometimes because, we were angry.

Sometimes because we were hurting ourselves
And didn’t know, what else to do with the pain.

But we did.

We hurt each other.

And I don’t want to spend the rest of my life
keeping score.

Who hurt who first.

Who apologized.

Who should have stayed.

Who should have left.

Who loved harder.

Who ruined what.

I don’t want to keep cross-examining our memories, like there is a verdict
that will make me feel better.

There isn’t.

There is just us.

Two people
who loved each other
and somehow became
each other’s wounds.

And I am tired of carrying that.

I don’t want to hate you.

I don’t want to forgive you
before I’m ready either.

I don’t want to romanticize
what we had.

I don’t want to demonize it.

I just want it to stop having power over me.

I want to remember us without wanting us back.

I want to remember the laughter, without forgetting the tears.

I want to remember the good
without using it, to excuse the bad.

I want to remember the bad
without allowing it, to erase the good.

I want to be able to say:

We were real.

We loved each other.

We hurt each other.

And it still wasn’t meant to last.

I don’t want to spend another year
trying to understand why we became this.

I don’t want to wait for an apology that may never come.

I don’t want to wait for you to understand what you did.

And I don’t want
to spend forever
punishing myself
for what I did too.

I want to put us down.

Not because
we meant nothing.

But because, we meant too much
for me to keep turning
our ending into a prison.

I have a life
outside of you.

I have a future
that has never heard
your name.

There are people
I haven’t met yet.

Places I haven’t seen.

Songs I haven’t heard.

Versions of myself
I haven’t become.

And I want them.

I want all of them.

So I am going.

Not because
I never loved you.

Not because
you never loved me.

Not because
I have forgotten.

But because
I cannot keep living
inside something
that is already over.

Maybe one day
I will think of you and feel nothing.

Maybe I won’t.

Maybe your name will always carry
a tiny echo of the girl I was when I loved you.

And maybe that’s okay.

I don’t need to erase you
to prove that I survived you.

I just need to stop building my life
around your absence.

So this is me
letting go.

Of you.

Of me.

Of us.

Of everything

we were supposed to be.

Of everything
we could have been.

Of everything
we did to each other.

Of everything
I wish I could undo.

I forgive myself
for loving you.

I forgive myself
for staying.

I forgive myself
for hoping.

And someday,

I hope I can forgive you
without needing you
to know that I did.

Because I have to move on.

I have to.

Not tomorrow.

Not when I’m ready.

Not when I stop missing you.

Now.

Because my life
is still waiting for me.

And I—

I have to go find it.

JoyzTheLostWriter ❤️‍🔥