HOPELESS ROMANTIC

her face is carved in scars

tears falling like shattered glass

her chest torn open

her heart exposed and bleeding

she screams in the agony of love

yet her bruised heart beats on

because even broken, it believes

in a love that will never leave

no wound deep enough

to silence her hope

no pain strong enough

to end her faith

she bleeds and she waits

for the love that will heal

for the endless love

that makes her whole

The universe has its own twisted poetry, doesn’t it?  As if beginnings and endings are sewn together with some invisible thread, forever pulling us from one into the other. I met him on the day I lost my father — the day my world crumbled and healed at once, like fate decided that grief and love should find me in the same hour. He came in quietly, like he’d been waiting in the wings all along, as if his purpose was to catch me just as I was falling apart. In the middle of my sorrow, he was there, a strange kind of rescue I hadn’t even realized I needed.

It didn’t take long to see that what we had was different. With him, I was open, naked in ways I’d never been, in ways that had nothing to do with skin and everything to do with the rawest parts of me — the parts I’d kept hidden for so long. “I love you naked,” he’d say, “in or out of clothes, at your most vulnerable, at your darkest.” He wanted all of me, even the parts I thought would scare anyone else away. For the first time, I felt truly seen, like he was reaching in and touching parts of me I hadn’t even let myself touch.

Our love was a strange kind of magic — an intimacy that went deeper than words, deeper than touch. We would talk for hours, sharing the thoughts most people would turn from, laughing and letting each other into the places we usually guarded. It felt like everything I’d ever wanted but thought I’d never find. He made me believe that love could heal, that maybe my softness didn’t need to be hidden away. And I was ready to love him, fully, without hesitation.

But life, it seems, delights in cruel timing. Just two days before he left, we had shared a day so full of magic it felt like a glimpse into the future we might one day build together. There was a charge in the air between us, something sacred and filled with promise, and in the middle of it, he asked me our little intimate question, our ritual commitment: if I’d marry him. He would ask in those special moments, and each time, it made me feel like I was a part of something only we could understand, something rare and just ours. In that moment, I believed in us with all my heart. We were in love, so deeply that it felt unbreakable. I had no idea that in two days, everything would change in ways I couldn’t have foreseen.

He told me he had to leave, that his mother was in the hospital, her life slipping through fragile threads, and he needed to be there for her. I felt his pain as if it were my own and promised I’d be there too, ready to stand beside him in his sorrow. I cleared my schedule, planned to go to him in just two days, ready to give him every ounce of strength I had. I worried for him, for his mother, not knowing then that the goodbye he gave me was not to visit her — it was his quiet way of vanishing from my life entirely. As he walked out my door, he began to ghost me as though I had meant nothing, a shadow to be erased.

Yet in his absence, a strange thing happened. It was like a door inside me shattered open; all the barriers I’d kept in place to stay safe, the armor I’d worn to survive, were suddenly gone. The distance life had forced me to keep, the hardness I’d learned, it all melted in that moment. I was ready, finally, to love him with everything in me. I was healed. I’d grown soft again, gentle in a way I hadn’t been for years. When he chose to end our story, I began to truly love, to open myself in a way I never had before. Beginnings and endings, twisted together once more — he had written to me once about this, in a love letter, about how he dreamed I might one day see the beauty he saw in me.

"One day, you’ll see it," he’d written, “the beauty in you, as ancient as the world itself…a beauty that’s been broken and rebuilt many times over but has never faded. One day, you’ll believe in it as much as I do.” And on that day, the day he walked away without a word, his dream came true. I was ready to love myself as fully as I loved him, and I had been ready to give him that love, unguarded and whole. He’ll never know that. Beginnings and endings—that was our story, written in my heart even as he turned his back.

To be left like that, without explanation, was a kind of exile. The silence cut deeper than any words could have. I’d trusted him with everything, and suddenly, I was standing in the ruins of that trust, questioning every piece of myself I’d bared. There were days I wanted to shut down, to close up all those raw places he’d helped open, to turn cold. It felt safer, easier. But that’s not who I am, and that’s not who I want to become.

Because here’s the truth: I am a hopeless romantic. I don’t want to live guarded or safe. I want to believe in love, even if it hurts, even if it means being left again. The love I gave him, the softness I found in myself — that was real. It mattered. And I choose to hold onto that, to keep my heart open, no matter how many times life tries to take its knife to me.

So here I am, scars and all, still believing that one day I’ll meet someone who knows how to stay, someone who won’t turn away from the broken places. I believe that love, real love, will find me again, and this time, it won’t vanish in the night. Until then, I’ll keep this heart open, vulnerable, unbreakable. Because to be a hopeless romantic is to trust, to hope, to love, even in a world that sometimes leaves us empty-handed.

One day, I believe, love will come and recognize the history etched in me, the quiet strength behind these scars. And until then, I’ll walk forward, bruised but unyielding, searching through the darkness for that aching, fierce, unbreakable thing we call love. Because to be a hopeless romantic is to surrender to the beauty of pain, to let it cut you open, and still have the courage to love through every crack and fracture that life leaves behind.