Some stories are written with ink on paper, while others are carved into the heart by time.
This one was never meant to be written.
This post is inspired by the lyrics of 'Don't say you love me' by Jin, from the album Echo. It is partly based on true story & partly fictionalised. Which part is real and which part is fictionalised is for me to know and you to guess.
This story began like most stories people romanticise in retrospect: two college kids in love with music, mischief, and each other’s company. They were in the same class and were part of the same circle. They were always seen together; planning pranks and walking aimlessly for hours, laughing like time would never run out. And somewhere in the middle of a mountain trail, when he offered his hand to help her cross a ridge, she thought, Maybe I don’t have to do everything alone anymore.
That moment felt like a promise. Not in words. Just in the way he held space for her independence and offered care anyway. It cracked something open in her, something she didn’t know had been sealed shut since childhood.
They fell in love. Or she did.
The story should have ended long before it began to rot.
Unfortunately it did not. And so, after a few years of dating, they got married. And slowly, he stopped walking beside her. Not physically, no. He was still there in the literal sense. But he had wandered off in every way that actually mattered. He left her to carry the weight of two families, a job, a home, and the growing silence in between.
He let her burn quietly. Gaslit her when their world struck her with words that wounded deeper than any slap. He watched, shrugged, and called it normal or denied everything and said it never happened. He said he loved her.
But love, she learned, doesn’t ask you to bleed quietly just to keep the peace of one person.
The breaking point wasn’t loud and did not come with announcements or guidelines.
It came when she fell sick and the fever wouldn’t let go for long months. He didn’t check on her. He didn’t help. He didn’t care. The man who once reached out to catch her on rocky mountain trails now wouldn’t so much as lift a finger when she was falling apart.
Physically. Mentally. Emotionally.
And that’s when the lyrics came to her. Like a cold truth whispered through, Jin’s voice shining as always:
Don't tell me that you're gonna miss me
Just tell me that you wanna kill me
Don't say that you love me 'cause it hurts the most
You just gotta let me go
Because if this was love, she didn’t want it.
Now, she feels… nothing.
No rage. No heartbreak. Just stillness.
She looks at that chapter like an old coat in the back of her closet — heavy, shapeless, no longer hers. She survived 15 long years with him. She can survive anything. She’s stronger. Sharper. More cynical, maybe, but also less willing to settle for anything less than real.
This story should have never been.
But it was.
And now, it’s hers to end... in truth, not in silence.
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