Love's Carousel

I have loved you from the very beginning—since that quiet night in Bible study when our eyes first met and something unspoken passed between us. I remember going home and telling my friend: "I met the man I am going to marry." That feeling never left me. It grew roots, deep and tangled, winding through every moment we shared, through vows spoken with trembling hope and hands held tightly against the unknown.

I do not regret marrying you. Even now, I can say that truthfully. In so many ways, we were each other’s refuge—two wounded hearts abused by our father's learning, however imperfectly, how to mend. We brought light into each other’s shadows. We tried. God, how we tried.

But love, no matter how enduring, cannot survive on its own.

You told me you would get help, and I believed you. I always believe you. I wanted to believe in the version of us that could still be whole. But the promises faded, as they have before, and we found ourselves once again circling the same quiet ache—the same apologies, the same hope, the same disappointment. Round and round we went, like a broken record spinning a song that never reaches its end, like a carousel that feels magical until you realize it never truly takes you anywhere.

And somewhere along the way, I forgot to ask myself why I stayed.

It wasn’t until I sat with the pastor’s wife, and heard the gentleness in her voice—the permission I didn’t know I was waiting for—that something inside me finally broke open. They told me I didn’t have to carry guilt like it was a calling. That love should not feel like a burden you must endure. And in that moment, the tears came—not just from pain, but from recognition.

I had stayed out of duty. Out of guilt. Out of a belief that leaving meant failure.

But staying, when love is no longer returned, when it becomes something fragile and dangerous, is its own kind of loss.

I love you. I always will. I believe in your own way, you love me too. That will never change, no matter how far apart our lives drift. You are woven into me in ways time cannot undo.

But I cannot remain where love no longer feels safe. Where it is promised but not lived. Where I am slowly disappearing in the space between what is said and what is done.

So I carry this love with me—not as a chain, but as a memory—and I let go.

I’m sorry, my love. Let me cherish these last few weeks beside you, gentle and unspoken, while I begin to rebuild the pieces of myself I have set aside. And then, quietly, we will part. Perhaps in the stillness of that separation, we will finally step off this endless carousel, and find, at last, the peace that has always seemed just out of reach.