Journal prompt

You sit across from someone in your past, and neither of you can lie. What truths are exchanged?

We’re at a table in a place that doesn’t belong to either of us.

It’s part Chinese takeout, part memory, part somewhere I used to get excited about.

It smells like spilled wine, old summer sweat,

regret warmed under soft lighting.

The floor creaks like it’s trying to leave the conversation.

They sit upright, still wearing that look like it proves something.

And maybe, in their mind, it does.

There’s that familiar expression again,

the one that says you were sunshine, until you burned too bright.

They loved me when I was glowing.

Post-run, post-lift, post-laugh.

Said I was the kind of lightness you brag about.

They liked when I sparkled in their orbit,

but not when I sparkled on my own.

What they meant was: you don’t ask for much, and I like that.

What they meant was: you shine on your own, and I get to bask in it.

I thought I was seen.

Turns out, I was just useful.

They brought me flowers in the shape of attention.

Opened doors so I wouldn’t notice the ones quietly closing behind me.

Fed me compliments until I forgot how hungry I really was.

There’s a kind of manipulation that hides in that chivalry.

In never letting me pay, but making me feel like a debt.

There’s a glass of wine on the table.

They glance at it like it’s a loaded gun.

I don’t touch it.

They still think I needed saving.

I still think they needed someone softer.

Someone with a smaller flame.

I want to ask if they remember the night I fell,

not just down the stairs, but off the pedestal they built for me.

“I didn’t know what to do,” they say, barely looking at me.

“You scared me. That night… you changed.”

I didn’t change.

I just let my guard down.

Just three months of shared laughter

was quickly undone by one bruise to the head.

They chose a label; I chose grace.

I called it a bad night.

Neither of us called it what it really was:

Fear.

They say something familiar, repeating my own words back to me.

“You don’t know what it’s really like when you’re in it. Isn’t that what you said?”

A soft echo meant to cut.

I wonder if they think I was the problem.

If my boundaries were too much.

I used to shrink under those thoughts, used to rewrite myself in their tone.

But now I see it:

They didn’t want a partner. They wanted peace.

And they thought love meant silence.

They called me glass that cracked when handled.

But they were the one who set the pressure.

Who canceled, who deflected, who refused to meet me

where I stood—calendar in hand, carving space for them

between a traumatic 9-5 job, coaching, workouts and friends.

And I still kept showing up to their quiet expectations.

Still cooking dinners, being sweet to people who looked through me.

And the second I let their pressure crack me,

not from wine, but from the self-doubts I’d been holding in,

they called it proof.

Said I was spiraling.

Never once asked if I was hurting.

Never once considered

that I might have fallen from more than just the stairs.

The background noise of judgment still lingers at their house.

It’s like a smoke alarm no one turns off.

I flinch instinctively. They don’t notice.

They still speak like they know more about healing than I do.

“I go to therapy,” they say.

Like that makes the silence we lived in make sense.

but I’ve stitched myself together more times

than they’ve sat with their own pain.

I see it now.

How easy it was for them to perform support

and still never hold me.

How empathy wore a costume,

but flinched when the show got too real.

They wanted a girl who glowed in pictures,

not a woman who asked to be chosen

in the moments that weren’t convenient.

Said I was different.

Then left because I was real.

“I did love you,” they whisper, eyes on the table.

They didn’t know how to stay.

I remember thinking this was the kind of love I’d build a life around.

It looked the part: athletic, empathetic, mature on the outside.

But now I see what I couldn’t then:

They weren’t ready for real love.

They just wanted to feel like a good person.

And I made that easy.

But I’ve stepped out of the play now.

Washed off the applause.

I’m not a mirror anymore,

not their platform,

not their lyrics.

Just someone who stopped folding herself small

so someone else could feel big.

She’s stronger now.

Not glowing.

Not perfect.

But rooted.

And still burning.