Have You Ever

  Abby and I were caught in the uncertain space between breaking up and holding on—neither fully apart nor truly together. The reconciliation was provisional, tentative, a fragile attempt to salvage something that had already begun to fray. In those weeks apart, I met someone new. Someone who looked at me like I was desirable, wanted, needed. And in my loneliness, that feeling was intoxicating. I wasn’t used to that kind of attention, the kind that fills an emptiness when heartbreak carves you hollow. So I leaned into it. I let myself be wanted, let the comfort of fleeting intimacy dull the ache. We spent the night together, then the morning, each moment carrying an unspoken understanding—that this wasn’t meant to last. By the time afternoon came, reality was setting in. I knew I had to step away, to end it before it became something more tangled. I was preparing to tell her it couldn’t happen again when Abby’s message arrived—breaking things off for good. Relief should have co...

  I’m still navigating the aftermath—recovering, processing, trying to make sense of it all. But now, with some distance, I find myself able to speak about it more candidly, no longer tangled in the web of denial. Guilt is a strange thing. It doesn’t strike all at once; it seeps in slowly, wrapping itself around the edges of your thoughts, lingering in the quiet spaces. At first, it was just a dull discomfort, an itch of regret that could be ignored. But guilt has a way of growing, of becoming louder, heavier, more relentless. It turns over memories like stones, exposing the weight of decisions I can’t take back. There’s something uniquely corrosive about secrecy. It lingers, festers, transforms even the most fleeting choices into burdens. Looking back, I realize now that the most insidious part of cheating wasn’t just the act itself—it was the silence that followed, the quiet weight of knowing, of hiding. I carried that guilt for too long, tucked away beneath layers of rational...