Love is quiet. It doesn’t always come in the ways we expect it—loud declarations or sweeping gestures. It’s softer, a pulse in the background of our lives, an unspoken truth that fills the spaces between moments. My last act of love is not grand or theatrical. It’s something more subtle: the slow, steady realization that love is not something I need to hold onto or chase after. It’s something I carry within me.
They say to be loved is to be seen. Truly seen—not just for the smiles and the good days, but for the mess, the vulnerability, the parts we try to hide. To be loved is to feel someone recognize the core of who you are, to understand you when words fall short. And yet, here I stand, heart in hand, realizing that maybe I was the one who needed to see myself all along.
It’s a tender kind of ache, loving someone who cannot love you back in the same way. You watch them, knowing your heart beats for them, hoping one day they’ll turn around and realize what’s been right in front of them all along. But sometimes, they never do. And that’s when you realize—the love you’ve been offering to them so freely is the love you should have been giving to yourself.
- I will leave you to see you seek your own happiness.
These words come from the deepest part of me, the part that has learned that love is not about possession or demands. It’s about setting someone free, allowing them to grow and discover what makes their soul come alive, even if that means they must walk away from you. It’s the hardest kind of love, the kind that asks you to let go, even when every fiber of your being wants to hold on.
For so long, I thought of myself as a hopeless romantic—someone who loved too much, too deeply. I poured everything I had into love, like a river flowing endlessly into the sea. But now I see the truth: I am not hopeless. I am full of hope. Full of love. And it’s not just for someone else—it’s for me. I realized I am the love I’ve been searching for all this time; I’m full of it.
We, the hopeless romantics, carry so much love within us that we sometimes forget to turn it inward. We think love is something we must earn, something that must be reciprocated to be real. But love is bigger than that. Love is the quiet, steady force that lives inside us, always. And even when the person you give your heart to doesn’t see you, that love doesn’t disappear. It stays, because it’s yours.
NIKI’s words echo in my mind: “Oh, why can't we for once say what we want, say what we feel? Oh, why can't you for once disregard the world, and run to what you know is real?” How many times did I wish for that moment? Wishing you’d stop, turn around, and see me for who I really am. To disregard everything else and just meet me here, where the love is real, where it’s simple. But life isn’t like that, and love—true love—doesn’t force anyone to stay.
It’s taken me a long time to understand that my love is not a question waiting for an answer. It’s not a gesture that needs to be returned. It just is. And whether or not you see it, whether or not you ever turn around, it remains—steady, unshaken, like a river that keeps flowing even when no one is watching.
As Kahlil Gibran wrote, “If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. If they don’t, they never were.” These words have become a compass for me, guiding me through the fog of unrequited love. I’ve come to understand that love doesn’t always need to be reciprocated to be meaningful. Sometimes, the most profound act of love is stepping back, letting someone else find their way, even if it takes them far from you.
I wonder if you ever knew how much I loved you. If you ever sensed the way my heart quieted when you walked into the room, or how I left traces of love in the smallest gestures. The way I noticed things about you that you might not have even noticed about yourself. But whether you saw it or not, I know now that it doesn’t matter. Because I saw you, and in seeing you, I hope I will find something deeper—I wish I finally found myself.
And so, my last act of love is not just for you. It’s for me. I let you go, not out of sadness or bitterness, but out of a quiet, unshakeable peace. I will leave you to seek your own happiness, and in doing so, I seek my own. I walk away, not empty, but full—full of the love I once tried to give you, the love that now belongs to me.
“To be loved is to be seen,” and though you may not have seen me the way I wanted, I have learned to see myself. I have learned that I am worthy of the love I have been searching for all along. And in that realization, I find freedom. So here is my heart, laid bare, no longer waiting for someone else to claim it.
My last act of love is not an ending but a beginning—a beginning of something gentler, more rooted in truth. I realize now that I am the love I’ve been searching for, and I always have been. And with that, I let you go, and I walk into a new chapter, where I am enough.
