theweightofthen

[theweightofthen]

Where the Sun Sets

Months ago

I named this blog Where the Sun Sets

not knowing why

only that the name felt like a whisper

from some far-off version of me

who had already made it through

I didn’t know it would become prophecy

Because on June 10

I stood on a dock in Norway

where the sea held the sun like a secret

and the sky glowed soft and gold,

the kind of light that doesn’t ask to be seen

but is unforgettable when it finds you

And in that stillness

my phone buzzed

A number

long deleted

but instantly familiar

like a voice I once memorized in the dark

It was him

One word

“Hey”

After six months of silence

After words that never became action

After the quiet grief of loving someone

who never truly stayed

I read it once

No spiral

No shaking

No storm in my chest

I didn’t answer

Not out of anger

Not to prove anything

But because I had nothing left to give

to the version of me

who only knew how to wait

And standing there

bathed in a light that didn’t burn

with the ocean breathing beneath me

and the sky exhaling the day

This was the moment I knew I had healed

This was where the sun set

And this

this was where

I finally rose

[theweightofthen]

I Was the Milky Way

(written for @picklemafia #galaxyprompt)

I loved him

like the Milky Way

big,

quiet,

and full of stars

just for him.

He never stopped

to really look.

Never saw

how much light

I was holding.

He said he cared,

but he didn’t stay.

He left.

And each time,

it hurt

a little more.

Still,

I kept shining,

hoping one day

he’d see it.

But now I know!

I was never the one

he looked for.

And all along,

I was the sky.

He just never looked up.

[theweightofthen]

Freedom Wears Daisies

Suddenly, it was December.

I know what you’re thinking,

why didn’t I let go sooner?

Trust me, looking back… I would’ve.

But grief makes you gentle with ghosts.

By then, he barely messaged.

But when he did, it was always the same words.

“I still want a life with you.”

“I just need time.”

No action. Just talk.

Always talk.

And on December 24th

not that the date mattered

I was finally strong enough to say it:

“Let me go.”

And for the first time, he didn’t resist.

He agreed.

And just like that, it ended.

But what followed was something I wasn’t prepared for.

The aftermath.

The betrayal I hadn’t fully seen until I was free of it.

The moments I thought were love,

now felt like manipulation in disguise.

But in my dreams…

something softer lived.

In my dreams, we didn’t fight.

There was no pain.

No leaving.

Just her:

the girl who had waited for her beautiful ending.

And in the dream,

she got it.

She danced in a field of flowers,

daisies in her hair,

light in her chest.

No tears.

No waiting.

She was loved.

And she was free.

And maybe that dream

wasn’t about him at all.

Maybe it was the goodbye I never got.

The soft, imagined ending the girl inside me needed

so I could stop waiting

and finally live.

I don’t ache like I used to.

The love, the loss, the longing,

they no longer hold me hostage.

They simply exist now.

Like chapters I’ve read

and learned from.

And I’m still here.

Not broken.

Just softer.

Freer.

And somehow, beautifully

whole.

[theweightofthen]

The Bridge He Never Crossed

I was in his country

not his city.

That was intentional.

I didn’t go to find him.

I didn’t even go to find myself.

I just needed to be far enough

to breathe,

and close enough

to wonder if he might show up.

Istanbul held it all:

the ache,

the history,

the hope I didn’t want to admit I still had.

He was everywhere.

In the call to prayer,

the language,

in the streets where I mistook strangers for him.

Then he messaged me.

He knew I was there.

Still married.

Said he wanted to come.

I said:

I can’t.

Said it wasn’t right.

But the truth?

I wanted him to come.

Just once.

To cross the distance.

To prove I still mattered enough

to be chosen.

He didn’t.

One October afternoon,

I stood on Galata Bridge.

The Bosphorus shimmered below.

Ferries came and went.

Couples walked by.

Fishermen waited,

quiet and patient.

The air smelled like salt,

grilled fish,

and everything I hadn’t let go of.

I took out a pen

and wrote on the railing:

“Sen ve ben, Kenan.

Belki bir gün bu köprüde birlikte duruyor olacağız”

You and me, Kenan.

Maybe one day we’ll stand on this bridge together.

It wasn’t a promise.

It wasn’t even hope.

Just a goodbye

that sounded like a wish.

Not for him

for the girl who waited.

Who showed up

with her whole heart

and stood there alone.

I was the girl

on a bridge

he never even tried to cross

[theweightofthen]

When the Pain Stopped Speaking

There’s a kind of crying

that doesn’t make a sound.

Your body just trembles,

quietly breaking from the inside out.

That’s how I cried

after reading the sentence

that he was going to be a father.

Until prayer felt like begging.

Until sleep felt like drowning.

Then one morning

the pain stopped.

It didn’t hurt anymore

that he was going to be a father.

And in the quiet that followed,

I started to believe something softer,

maybe their marriage wasn’t about love.

Maybe it existed just to bring that child into the world.

Maybe that was its only purpose.

And maybe it had nothing to do with me,

or what we once were.

And just as I started to make peace with that,

he told me he still loved me.

Still wanted a life with me.

Still dreamed of us.

And I believed him.

Because some part of me

still needed to believe

that love could find its way home.

But then he said it,

the one line that should’ve ended everything:

“I need to settle her first.”

Like she was a chore.

Like I was a waiting room.

I should’ve walked away.

I should’ve slammed the door

so hard the echo would’ve chased him.

But love…

love makes you soft,

even when you’re trying to be strong.

So I agreed.

Quietly.

Stupidly.

Heartbreakingly.

I said,

“Then maybe we shouldn’t be in contact…

at least not right now.”

I told myself I was setting a boundary.

That if he truly meant it,

he’d come back fully.

No guilt.

No loose ends.

No shadows.

But deep down

I knew.

People who love you

don’t ask you to wait

while they build a life with someone else.

He wasn’t choosing me.

He was choosing comfort.

Familiarity.

Control.

He was afraid

to lose the pieces of both lives

he’d built around his silence.

And I was the one

holding my breath

while he decided

who to be.

[theweightofthen]

He Called From Another Life. I Picked Up Anyway.

It had been a year.

A year of silence.

A year of trying to breathe without him.

Of pretending the sound of his name didn’t still echo.

And then, in July

I saw a missed call from a number I didn’t recognize.

But my heart did.

It was him.

I messaged it. Asked if it was him.

And in that moment, I felt something rise in me,

something wild and foolish.

I smiled.

I thought maybe this was it.

Maybe he was free.

Maybe love really did come back.

But it didn’t.

It was him, wondering how I was doing.

Just checking in.

Still married.

Still gone.

And then he told me

he was about to be a father.

In two months.

I remember reading the message like it was written in fire.

My hands went still.

My lungs forgot how to be lungs.

We had talked about being parents.

We whispered names into the dark.

Laughed about who they’d look like.

Promised they’d grow up in a house full of warmth.

And now he was living that life—

but with someone else.

He didn’t come back for love.

He came back out of habit,

like touching a scar to see if it still hurts.

And I guess it did.

For me, not him.

Because while he built a life,

I was still standing in the ruins of the one we dreamed up together.

And maybe that was the final truth

he never meant to stay.

He just wanted to know if I was still there.

And I was

[theweightofthen]

[theweightofthen]

After I Sent Him My Closure Letter, He Returned—Still Not Free

Three months after I sent him my closure, a message I wrote with shaking hands.

he came back.

Said he wanted to leave her.

Said she was suffocating him.

Said his heart still lived in the spaces we once touched.

And I’d be lying if I said it didn’t ache.

Because I still loved him.

Not loudly. Not recklessly.

But in the quiet way you love someone who lives in your blood memory.

And still…

I told him the truth:

You’re married. And you owe her more than this.

Even when it felt like I was stitching my own mouth shut,

I said it.

I accepted his choice

the one that didn’t include me.

And strangely, I felt sorry for her.

For the woman who wore his ring but never truly had his heart.

For the woman who didn’t know he still whispered my name

in the quiet parts of his mind.

I could’ve been selfish.

I could’ve taken him back like a wound that never healed right.

But I didn’t.

Because love, real love, doesn’t ask you to steal it.

And I didn’t want to be chosen in the wreckage of someone else’s life.

I didn’t want to be the reason he left.

I wanted him to figure that out on his own.

I wanted to be wanted without having to ask for it.

Because if he had to be told to leave her…

he never really chose me.

And if he ever came back

I wanted him to come free.

Not just from her.

But from the confusion, the guilt, the weight of indecision.

I wanted a love that could stand in the light.

Not one that survived in shadows.

[theweightofthen]

The Story of Kenan — The One I Let Go, Who Lived in My Chest

There’s a story I’ve carried in silence.

A story that lived in my chest like a quiet ache, breaking me in places no one could see.

Today, I’m letting it out. Not to rewrite the past, but to finally release it.

—————————

I met Kenan five years ago.

From the beginning… I knew.

I knew I was going to fall.

I knew it would hurt.

But I fell anyway.

What started soft and magnetic became long distance.

Then came the fear. The silence. The ache of missing someone who was always just out of reach.

Life happened—COVID, closed borders, and battles I was fighting alone.

So I ended it.

Not because I stopped loving him.

But because I didn’t know how to keep loving someone I couldn’t touch anymore.

I thought:

If it’s real, it’ll find its way back.

Months passed.

Then one day, I reached out again.

And he was married.

I won’t lie, something inside me shattered.

I blamed myself.

For letting go.

For not waiting longer.

For choosing peace when part of me was still holding on.

And the hardest part?

I still had a letter for him.

A letter I never sent.

It held everything I couldn’t say.

Everything I didn’t know how to ask for.

Everything I needed to release.

When I reached out after the earthquake in his country, it wasn’t just concern, it was closure.

A quiet hope that maybe… just maybe… those unsent words still mattered.

He replied.

He said he still loved me.

That his marriage wasn’t love, it was circumstance.

And somehow… that hurt more than silence.

Because it meant the love was still there.

But it no longer belonged to us.

And there I was still holding a goodbye I never got to speak.

[theweightofthen]

I have been a thousand different women by Emory Hall

[theweightofthen]

Unburdening My Heart

Some stories don’t fade, no matter how much time passes. They live in the quiet spaces between heartbeats, in the echoes of words left unsaid, in the memories that come rushing back when you least expect them.

I have carried this story in my chest for so long holding it close, holding it in. It has shaped me, broken me, and pieced me back together in ways I never could have imagined. And for the longest time, I thought that if I stayed silent, if I locked it away, it would lose its power over me.

Maybe in the process, by writing about it, I will finally hear myself, see my worth. Maybe, in letting this story breathe, I will learn to set it down and walk forward without its weight.

So before I begin, I just want to say this: I am not writing to hold on. I am writing to let go. To set myself free.

My story begins in the next post. But today, I am choosing to begin.

[theweightofthen]

🌻

[theweightofthen]

Poetry in the Distance

You used to write me poetry.

I’d read them over and over, like trying to decode a message, trying to figure out what you were saying without saying it directly. You made me feel things I wasn’t ready to feel, made me feel seen and heard in ways I didn’t expect.

Even though we were miles apart, your words made it feel like you were right there beside me, sharing pieces of yourself that you never said face to face.

Your poetry became the one thing I could hold onto when everything else seemed uncertain. But as beautiful as it was, I knew it wasn’t meant to last.

So now, I’m left with your words, wondering how something so brief could leave such a permanent mark.

[theweightofthen]

We were never in the same place, but somehow, you always felt close.

For months, you tried. You kept me in your orbit, filling up the space between us with words that were soft, careful, like you knew I was fragile but still wanted to hold me anyway.

And I let you. Even though I knew better. Even though I knew falling for you would be the end of me.

Love doesn’t need to be close. It grows in places it shouldn’t, in late-night conversations across time zones, in moments that mean more than they should.

I’m not sure if I was holding on to you or the idea of you. Maybe both. Maybe neither. But despite the distance, you were the closest thing to home I’ve ever felt.

Maybe that’s why losing you feels like losing myself.

[theweightofthen]

For K

I only met you once. Just once. But somehow, that single moment stretched into something bigger, something I still carry with me.

I remember the way you looked at me, into my soul. like you already knew me.

I wonder if you knew then what I know now—that you would become a part of me, even from a distance. That I would hold on to a version of you, built from fragments of that one meeting, and the echoes of our conversations, from the way your absence lingers more than your presence ever did.

I don’t know if you’ll ever read this. I don’t know if it would even matter. But I write because I need to, because some people come into our lives like the sun, setting too soon, yet leaving behind a warmth that never really fades.

This is where I try to make sense of loving someone I barely knew, yet somehow, knew so deeply.

[theweightofthen]

[theweightofthen]

«Where the Sun Sets: A Beginning»

At some point, we all face our own sunset. Whether it’s the end of a relationship, losing someone you thought you’d always have, or those quiet moments when you realize you don’t recognize yourself anymore. But even the darkest sunsets always promise a new dawn and that’s where I am now.

I loved deeply, and I lost. And now I’m left with a heart that once burned bright, now learning how to flicker in the quiet. I write because in the mess of heartbreak, it’s the only thing that makes sense