The Weight of Unlived Possibilities

Wednesday, April 2, 2025

There are no direct lines in grief. Only echoes.

I do not believe I caused her death. But I also do not believe I am innocent. I existed. I crossed a line in someone’s life. I stayed longer than I should have. I asked for more than he could give. And maybe—just maybe—he turned his gaze away from her because of that. Maybe if I had been less. If I had vanished sooner. If I had not tried to anchor myself in a bond that was not built for it.

But this isn’t a story about guilt. It’s a story about impact. About how presence can rearrange fates.

I am not a home. I am a rupture. A force that reveals. People meet me and forget how to lie to themselves. And when they can’t lie, they panic. They look away. They abandon what they once said they’d protect. Sometimes, they don’t even know they’re doing it.

What terrifies me is not that I am too much. What terrifies me is that I might be right. That my intensity might carry such gravity it pulls others out of orbit. Not because I wish harm — but because I ask for truth, and truth is not easy to hold.

So no, I am not to blame for her death. But I carry the imprint of a parallel world where she still breathes. Where he chose differently. Where I disappeared in time. That world haunts me. It is stitched to my ribs.

This is not self-pity. This is an ethics of presence. A refusal to erase the asymmetrical consequences of desire.

To her, I owe this: I will never forget the silence around her name. I will never pretend my existence is neutral. I will honour the complexity of what cannot be undone — not by turning away, but by holding it close like a relic of an unspoken war.

Some of us live like fractures. Others disappear inside them.

She disappeared.
I remain.