There are patterns in life that we recognise only after we have lived them enough times. The first time, we call it coincidence. The second, bad luck. By the third, we begin to wonder if there is something we are supposed to understand.

I have been thinking about that lately. About people. About love. About departures. About the strange familiarity of watching almost the same story unfold with different faces. Three people chose to leave me. And then, at some point, I chose to leave the fourth.

The first left me over text after what had been a movie date.
The second said goodbye to me in a metro.
The third got married and left me in the most shattered and broken position I had ever known. He left at a time when I was already at the lowest point of my life, and somehow, I had to learn how to put myself back together while carrying that loss.
And then there was the fourth. Perhaps he got bored of me. Perhaps something changed. Perhaps he found love somewhere else.

Different people. Different circumstances. Different endings.
But the feeling was strangely familiar.
Love was there. Then something changed.
Slowly, it faded. And eventually, they chose someone else.

Perhaps that is what stays with you – not always the leaving, but the choosing. The realisation that someone you once considered home had begun imagining a life in which you were no longer a part.

What is stranger still is that, every time, I somehow knew.
I knew who they would end up with. The signs were there, often right in front of me. I saw the shifts. I noticed what didn’t feel right. I felt uncomfortable, and I said so. I shared my perspective. Sometimes, I warned. Not because I wanted to control their choices. Not because I wanted to be proved right. But because when you love someone, you hope that honesty might protect them from something you can already sense coming.

But I never tried to stop any of them.
I never fought to make someone stay.

Perhaps that sounds strange. Perhaps people will say that when someone leaves, you should fight harder. Prove your love. Convince them. Give them one more reason to stay. But I have never believed in holding someone who has already decided to let go. Because, for me, love cannot be something I have to negotiate for.
I have always believed that if the love between two people is real and alive, another person should not become an alternative waiting in the wings. The moment someone begins choosing someone else, something fundamental has already changed.

Maybe that is my understanding of love. Maybe that is also my pride.
I would rather be left than be someone’s second choice.

For a long time, I believed that if I loved someone enough, stayed patient enough, explained myself clearly enough and compromised enough, perhaps things would eventually work out. I don’t believe that anymore. Not because I believe in love any less. If anything, I understand love better now. I know that love can be genuine and still not be enough to sustain a relationship. Two people can care deeply for each other and still hurt each other. People can change. Feelings can change. And sometimes, despite everything you have shared, one person simply chooses a different life.

That doesn’t erase what existed. It only means that something can be real without being permanent. And the heart is not particularly good at understanding that. It remembers the smallest things. A song. A photograph. A familiar restaurant. A particular evening. A movie theatre. A metro ride. A stupid joke nobody else would understand. Sometimes an ordinary moment can bring an entire relationship rushing back.

Do I regret my choices?
No.

I loved with the heart I had at the time. I stayed when I believed staying was right. I spoke when silence began hurting more than honesty. I tried. I forgave. I hoped. And when I eventually chose to leave, I did so because something inside me had become tired of abandoning myself just to keep another person beside me. That doesn’t make me right, and it doesn’t make them wrong. It simply means that, at some point, we reached different conclusions about what we could live with.

And yet, I am sad.
Of course I am.
There is no strength in pretending otherwise.

You can know that something wasn’t right for you and still miss it. You can grieve the future you once imagined. You can genuinely wish someone happiness and still feel an ache knowing that their happiness no longer includes you. I don’t want someone back, and sometimes I miss what we were.

Those feelings can exist together. Perhaps that is one of the quieter truths of growing older: the heart does not always resolve itself neatly. Sometimes it simply learns to carry more than one truth at once.

What I don’t want is bitterness.

I don’t want to turn people into villains simply because they eventually became strangers. There was love. There was laughter. There were years. Some moments mattered. There were things I learnt, and there were parts of me that grew because of those relationships. Even the one who left me at my lowest point was once someone I loved deeply.

I don’t need to deny that love simply because the ending hurt. I can acknowledge what was beautiful without pretending it was perfect. I can acknowledge what broke me without allowing it to become the definition of my life.

I still have questions.
Why did someone change?
Why did someone choose another person?
Why did someone who once loved me decide that another life was more appealing?

Maybe I will never have all the answers.

People make choices for reasons that belong to them. I may understand some of those reasons. I may never understand others. What I do know is that I cannot spend my life trying to decode someone else’s decision to leave.

There is too much life still waiting for me. There is my writing. My music. My work. My travels. The stories still waiting to be told. The books I still want to write. The people I haven’t met. The places I haven’t seen. The quiet mornings, unfamiliar cities, coffee shops, conversations and sunsets that are still waiting for me.

My life is not the sum of my relationships.
And it certainly isn’t defined by their endings.

I don’t know who will walk into my life next. I don’t know who will stay. I don’t even know what love will look like if it finds me again. But I know what I want now. I don’t want to compete for affection. I don’t want to beg for certainty. I don’t want to keep explaining why something hurts. I don’t want to shrink myself to fit someone else’s idea of love. And I don’t want to spend another lifetime proving that I am worthy of being chosen.

If someone comes into my life again, I hope they choose me freely. Not because I convinced them. Not because they are afraid of being alone. Not because I happened to be there. But because they genuinely want to be there.

So no, I don’t regret my choices.
Yes, I feel sad.
Yes, some memories still hurt.
But I don’t complain.
Because I have come to believe that not everything that ends is a failure.

Some relationships teach us about love. Some teach us about boundaries. Some teach us what we will and will not accept. And some teach us something much harder: that we can lose someone we once thought we couldn’t live without – and still discover that our life is larger than the loss.

Perhaps the universe does have a greater purpose for me.
I don’t know what it is.
Maybe I don’t need to.

Maybe someday, when enough time has passed, I will look back at these years with tenderness – for the people we were, for the love we shared, and for the person I was still becoming. Because somewhere between all those endings, I found something I had spent years looking for in other people.

A sense of home within myself.

Maybe that was the lesson.
Not that people left.
Not that love faded.
Not that someone else was chosen.
But that, eventually, I learnt to choose myself without guilt.

Perhaps the universe was never taking people away from me.
Perhaps it was bringing me back to myself.
And if that is what all of this was for, then I can make peace with it.

Because what has happened has happened.
And somehow, after everything,
I still believe it has happened for good.