Other Passing Day

Valentines came like a stranger once more as I sat at the shore of all the pieces of what we once were. I kept your name stitched into my skin and your voice trapped in my heart until both bled me dry. They call it the month of love but as always I am merely an observer. 

Everywhere I looked flowers were plastered all around and I felt the tempest roar stir in my depths. A shadow cloaked me as darkness reigned over my heart. Emptiness ached as I saw all those heart shaped boxes and chocolates stacked in all the shops I visited. Rage’s embers alight as his name dared to cross my mind. He left me in this hollow to live with grief.

February love feels like a parade I was once invited to then just as quietly uninvited from. The music still plays on and the confetti still falls. I stand behind a barricade no one seems to notice.

I watch as the world decorates itself in bright colors in the name of love that now feel all wrong to me, it is quite a peculiar cruelty. Devotion seems as though it is weightless as red balloons strain toward the sky. All the shop windows blush in shades of pink and crimson. Strangers hold hands with a kind of casual certainty that feels foreign to me now. The world performs romance like sonnets written by William Shakespeare and I move through it like a ghost rehearsing an old life.

I believed I stood at the center of that stage once. Once I believed love was a permanent ink. I stitched his promises into my bones. I let his laughter build rooms inside my heart. I memorized the architecture of his affection and called it home. 

But homes, I am afraid can collapse.

Now as I sit at the shore lines of what remains sifting through fragments, soft memories cut deep as I hold them for far too long. I find myself questioning everything. Was it actually love or just longing dressed in a love’s costume? Was I cherished or merely convenient? Did he leave because love fades or was it never rooted deeply enough to withstand the storm?

Unfortunately, these questions do not have neat answers. They circle me again and again like gulls over a wreckage.  

In this season, I do not participate in love. Simply I observe and over analyze it. I exist beside it, studying its patterns as though it were language I once spoke but now struggle to remember.

I see how it is loudly advertised. Grand gestures, carefully curated surprises and public declarations that shimmer with certainty. I wonder how much of it is truly real and how much is just a performance. I wonder how many hearts beat in quiet doubt beneath the bouquets and candlelight dinners.

Yes there is bitterness in me, I admit. Let us call it what it is. A spark of anger that he walks freely through February while I carry the weight of absence. Rage flickers when his name surfaces unexpectedly, when a song or scent resurrects what I tried to bury.

But beneath the rage is something softer. A wound still tender. A longing not just for him but for the version of myself that believed without hesitation.

The world says love is partnership. That being alone in this month means I am lacking but what if that narrative is flawed? What if being outside looking in is not failure but perceptive?

From here, I see clearly.

 I see how easily people confuse attention with devotion. I see how some chase the aesthetic of love more than its substance. I see how desperate loneliness can masquerade as romance.

And in my solitude, I confront myself.

Who am I without him? Who am I when no one is whispering promises into my ear? Who am I when the calendar insists I should be wrapped in someone’s arms? I can only be wrapped in my own thoughts.

The answers were uncomfortable but they were raw and honest.

I am angry. I am grieving. I am healing. I am learning.

There is strength in surviving love’s departure. It may not feel triumphant or look glamorous but to endure heartbreak without surrendering to cynicism is its own quiet victory.

Yes, February feels heavy. Yes, the sight of roses still stings. Yes, there are moments when I resent the world for something I lost.

But I am still here.

Outside looking in does not mean I am unworthy of love. It means I am in transition. It means I am rebuilding foundations that no longer rely on anyone’s presence.

Perhaps love will return one day, not as fireworks, not as a parade but something steady. Something rooted. Something that does not require me to bleed to prove its existence.

Until then, I will stand at this shoreline.

I will gather my scattered pieces.

I will let the tide take what no longer serves me.

And I will remember that observing love is not the same as being excluded from it.

It is simply a season

And seasons do change.