Breaking Us Into Pieces

 You began the process of breaking us into pieces before I understood what was happening. Not all at once. Not in a way I could point to and say, here—this is where it started. It came through small adjustments. A shift in tone. A silence where there used to be an answer. Something withheld that I could feel but could not name.

At first, I thought it was time. I thought this is what happens when things settle, when people grow used to one another. I told myself not to expect too much. I adjusted. I learned how to stand in the space you left without asking you to fill it.

But something in me kept track.

Not in a loud way. Not in accusation. It marked what changed. It noticed how I began to divide myself without realizing it. The part of me that still reached for you. The part that learned to stay quiet. The part that tried to understand what I had done wrong.

I did not see it as breaking. I saw it as making things work.

You spoke less. You turned away more easily. You left things unfinished. Conversations stopped in the middle. I learned how to carry both sides. I answered what you did not say. I held what you set down.

There was a point where I began to feel it physically. Not pain exactly. More like a pressure that stayed. Something in me stretched beyond what it could hold without consequence.

Still, I stayed.

I told myself this was what care required. That staying meant something. That if I remained steady, something would return to how it had been.

It did not.

Instead, I became careful. Measured. I chose words that would not push you further away. I stopped bringing certain things to you. I stopped hoping for a response that met me where I was.

The breaking did not happen in a single moment. It happened in increments so small I could live inside them.

Until I could not.

There came a point where I could feel how far I had moved from myself. Not because you asked me to, but because I learned how to bend in ways that kept the surface intact.

That was the cost.

Not just what was between us, but what I had set aside in order to keep it.

I can see it now with more clarity than I had then. Not as something dramatic  or as something I can place blame on and be done with it.

But as a process that began quietly.

You began it.

And I continued it

until I learned what it was doing to me.