The Heart Remembers What the World Cannot Explain
Section 4: What Remains after the Ending
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There are endings that feel like knives.
There are endings that feel like release.
And there are endings that feel like both.
He withdrew not out of indifference,
but out of protection.
He stopped reading because he cared.
He chose silence not to avoid me,
but to shield me from a world that could swallow me whole.
In that final act,
he became the man he had pretended to be—
the protector,
the one who stayed strong when I could not,
the one who carried the burden of ending something neither of us wanted to end.
Some people show love by holding on.
Others show love by letting go quietly,
so the other person can live.
And that is what he did.
This is not an absolution.
It is an acknowledgment of the complicated truth:
Two people can share something deeply human,
even when everything around them is inhuman.
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