Moon River

There are people who walk into your life not to stay, but to awaken something within you, and Hao was one of them.

He came quietly, like the start of a song I didn’t know I’d come to love so deeply. The kind of soul who doesn’t realize how gentle he is, how deeply he feels, or how worthy he is of being loved, simply for existing as he is.

But love, when it’s real, doesn’t always come easy. Sometimes it arrives wrapped in contradictions, tenderness and fear, closeness and distance, longing and restraint. With Hao, I learned that even the most beautiful connections can exist in a space where love is felt, but not fulfilled.

We loved differently. We believed differently. And in a world that demanded choices between love and faith, between freedom and fear, we found ourselves standing on opposite sides of the same ocean, reaching out, but unable to bridge the tide.

So I left, not because I stopped loving him, but because I knew I had to for us find our own peace.

Because love, when it begins to cost you your peace, asks for a kind of bravery that doesn’t always end in staying. Sometimes, loving someone means letting them go, trusting that distance can be an act of grace too.

And yet, I still love him, quietly, steadily, without expectation. I love him for the way his mind works, for the kindness he doesn’t see in himself, for the way he hides his softness behind laughter and irony.

I love him for the parts he’s too afraid to show, the unspoken fears, the fragile hopes, the boy who believes he’s too complicated to be loved when, in truth, he’s made of everything beautiful.

Hao has every right to be loved. Every right to be seen in his wholeness, not just in his strength, but in his doubts and shadows too. And though I may no longer be the one beside him, I hope he finds that kind of love one day, the kind that doesn’t scare him. I hope he heals from everything that scares him.

I used to think love had to last to mean something. Now I know, sometimes, the purest love is the one that sets you free.

In another universe, maybe we would have made it. But in this one, I’ll honor him by remembering, that once in my life, I met someone who showed me what it means to love without possession, to care without control, to let go with grace.

Hao was never a mistake.

He was a blessing, one I’ll carry with me, always 🤍

Xoxo