Sometimes I wonder if people realise that not every disappearance is an abandonment.
Sometimes, a person simply goes quiet because their mind has become a house in the middle of a storm.
When you are constantly in survival mode, you don’t always remember what happened yesterday. You forget messages you meant to reply to. You lose track of time. You move through days on autopilot, putting out whatever fire is closest to you.
And sometimes, without meaning to, you disappear from the people you love.
Not because they stopped mattering.
Sometimes, they matter so much that you don’t want to bring your mess to their doorstep.
You convince yourself that you are protecting them. That you will come back when the storm passes. That you will explain everything properly when your head is clearer and you finally have the words.
But people on the other side of the silence don’t experience it that way.
They only see the empty chair.
They don’t see the person sitting somewhere inside the house, trying to keep the windows from breaking.
So when the storm finally settles and you find your way back, you may return thinking, I’m okay now. I can finally come home.
And they may look at you and think, You left me.
Both things can be true.
I don’t think I was always right. I don’t think being overwhelmed makes every decision I made okay. There are things I could have communicated better, things I wish I had handled differently, and people I wish I had never unintentionally hurt.
But I also wish people knew that sometimes, leaving was never about choosing not to love them.
Sometimes it was about not knowing how to exist anywhere at all.
I am learning that disappearing to survive can still leave wounds in the people who were waiting for you.
And perhaps healing means learning how to leave the door open next time — even if all I can manage to say is,
“I’m struggling. I haven’t forgotten you. I just don’t know how to be here right now.”
Because sometimes, the people we love don’t need us to arrive with the whole house put back together.
They just need to know we’re still inside.
