You never really left

There are moments when we believe we have outgrown the things we once loved. We step away, telling ourselves it was never ours to keep, that we were only borrowing it for a while. That we have moved on, that we are better off without it. And maybe, for a time, that feels true. Maybe there is relief in letting go, in closing a door before it has the chance to close on us. But if something is truly meant for you, it does not let you go. It lingers in the spaces you try to fill, in the quiet moments you try to ignore.

I have left things behind before. Slowly, without realizing, without meaning to. I have walked away from what I loved, not because I stopped loving it, but because I wasn’t sure it ever loved me back. Because it is easier to walk away first than to wait and wonder if it will leave on its own. I have left before I could fail, before I could find out if I was enough. And for a while, I told myself that was freedom. That moving on meant I was stronger. That I had made peace with the loss.

But peace does not feel like absence. Peace does not feel like waking up and realizing the part of you that once burned has dulled to embers. Peace is not pretending you don’t miss it, that you don’t feel the hollow space where it used to be. We like to believe we are the ones who choose to leave, but sometimes, we are just trying to outrun the grief of losing something we were never meant to let go of.

At first, the silence feels like a gift. A stillness, a quiet, a release. But then it stretches too long, too wide, and suddenly, the silence is heavier than what you carried before. You are no longer holding it, but you are holding the ache of what it meant to you. And that is heavier still. You think you have moved on, but the truth is, you are only waiting. Waiting for the thing you love to call you back, waiting for proof that it was always yours.

Maybe you convince yourself it was never real, that you imagined the way it made you feel, that the longing you still carry is nothing more than nostalgia. But if it was never real, then why does its absence still feel like mourning? If you were never meant to have it, why does every other path feel empty in comparison?

The path you take away from what you love will always lead you back to it. Even when you do not realize you are walking toward it. Even when you are lost, it is still there. It has not forgotten you, even if you have tried to forget it. You may leave it behind, but one day, when you turn back, you will find it waiting.

And maybe the real heartbreak is not in losing it, but in realizing you were never meant to leave at all.

But life has a way of leading us home, even when we think we are lost. Even when we believe we have strayed too far, that we have turned our backs for too long, that the door has closed behind us forever. What is meant for you is never truly lost. Not in distance, not in silence, not in all the years you spent convincing yourself you could live without it. It waits. It does not beg, it does not demand, but it waits. And when you are ready—when you look over your shoulder and realize you cannot keep walking away—it will be there.

The first step back is quiet. It is not an epiphany, not a grand return. It is a whisper, a gentle recognition, the feeling of something old settling back into place as if it had never left at all. You pick up the thing you abandoned, and it does not resent you for leaving. It only welcomes you home. You realize then that it was never outside of you—it was woven into your very being. You could not have lost it, even if you tried.

Maybe you had to leave to understand. Maybe you had to mourn it to realize what it meant to you. Maybe the distance was necessary—not as an ending, but as a way of seeing it clearly, of understanding that you were never separate from it at all. You take the first step back, and then the next, and then the next, and suddenly, you are no longer searching. You have arrived. Not because you finally found it, but because you finally remembered that it was yours all along.

"If it is truly meant for you, it’s already waiting for you to arrive."

And maybe that is what love is. Not just the kind we give to people, but the kind we give to our own lives—to the things that set our souls on fire, to the dreams we tried to silence, to the parts of ourselves we thought we had to let go of. Love is what stays. It is what calls us back, even after we have turned away.

So here you are. And here it is. Waiting. As it always has been. As it always will be. You never really left.