You Took a Piece of Me and Maybe That’s Okay

Healing isn’t about becoming who you were before them. It’s about accepting who you are after.

You left with a piece of me I’ll never get back.

And for a long time, I hated that. I wanted every bit of me that ever touched you every word, every look, every soft version of myself I back in my possession. I thought that’s what healing meant. Reclaiming. Untangling myself from you so completely that nothing about you could touch me anymore.

But that’s not how it works, is it? When you give yourself to someone really give yourself there’s no undoing it. No “take backs.” Certain moments, certain versions of you, they just… stay with them. The version of me that laughed too loudly at your dumb jokes. The version that believed love could fix things. The version that wanted to stay even when everything in me said go. Those versions don’t live here anymore. They live with you. And maybe that’s where they belong.

It used to drive me crazy, thinking about that. I wanted to be whole again untouched, unbothered, new. But maybe healing isn’t about scrubbing love off your skin. Maybe it’s about learning to live with the marks it left behind. Maybe it’s realizing that just because someone carries a part of you doesn’t mean you’re missing something. It means you gave enough to leave a mark.

And yeah, it hurts sometimes. It hurts to know that someone out there still holds a version of you you’ll never meet again. But it’s also kind of beautiful, isn’t it? To have lived something real enough that it echoes even after it’s gone.

I think that’s the quiet truth no one really says out loud you don’t get to love deeply and walk away untouched. You’ll always leave a little piece behind. But you’ll also take something with you. A lesson. A tenderness. A new way of understanding yourself.

So no, I won’t get that piece of me back. But maybe I don’t need to. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe some parts of us are meant to stay scattered across people and moments so that when love finally finds us again, we can recognize ourselves in the pieces that come back.

And maybe, just maybe, what’s left in me now… is enough.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.