almost-love❤‍🩹

The closure you deserved.

To anyone who gave love to someone who didn’t know what to do with it. To the person whom the deafening sound of silence still haunts.

I had a man once. Not quite a boyfriend. Not quite a stranger. Just someone who lingered in the space between promises and silence.

The sum of the relationship? ‘What are we?’, long stretches of ghosting, a few nights of warmth, and plenty of ‘I’m not ready’.

He said he wanted to build with me, then asked if my dreams weren’t too big. He said he cared, then just like that, he vanished.

Over and over.

And somehow, I kept hoping ‘this time would be different’. But it never was. It was simply a merry-go-round of chaos.

Then, after a year of complete absence, he returned. Apologized. Called. Triple-texted. Promised. Suddenly he knew how to call back. How to show up. And I sat there stunned; like, “So this man could have done all this all along?”.

Alas, I forgave him. But I didn’t give him another chance. Still, a small part of me hoped he’d keep trying. Not because I wanted him back, but because I wanted to know I was worth the effort. I wanted to see him fight, even if I didn’t care anymore. The effort lasted two days.

Then silence. Again. This time I wasn’t hurt, instead there was a satisfactory smile on my face. I had healed and grown, now fully aware I was worth more than an option or an unsure answer.

But that’s the thing about almost-love: It looks like love. Sounds like love. Feels like love. But it disappears the moment you ask it to stay. It crumbles when faced with consistency. It flatlines when met with standards.

It thrives in maybe, in not-quite, in let’s see where this goes. Almost-love doesn’t call you home; it keeps you waiting on the porch, checking your phone, making excuses for the silence. It’s the paragraph that never gets finished, the apology that almost felt real. And when it ends—if you can even call it an ending—there’s no explosion. Just quiet. Just a knowing that whatever you were building never had a foundation. That the love you gave had no place to land. Still, part of you grieves it like a real thing. Because it almost was. And almost can feel like everything when you’re the only one showing up.

You don’t miss them. You miss the version of them you imagined. The one who never existed outside of your hope. The one you built out of the soft moments and sharp promises they never kept.

Here’s what Almost-love teaches you; You can pour your heart into someone and still be left empty. You can be worthy, and they will still walk away. It’s not a reflection of your value. It’s a reflection of their capacity. Real love doesn’t need convincing. It doesn’t require shrinking.

So now, you don’t beg for crumbs. You don’t decode silence. You don’t chase closure in people who speak in ellipses.

You let Almost be just that—not a failure, not your fault—but a stepping stone out of wrong relationships. Because next time, you won’t settle for almost, you’ll wait for all.

And this time, you’ll know the difference.

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