Aisha, and the Love I Wasn’t Ready to Keep

On fear, softness, and the heartbreak of realizing too late that love was never the problem.

Some people enter your life like lessons.
Others arrive like miracles.
Aisha came like both, and I didn’t know how to hold either.

I met her in a season when I wasn’t searching for permanence, only comfort. But love doesn’t wait for permission. It settles quietly. It grows without announcement. One day, you wake up and realize someone has rearranged the furniture in your heart, and somehow, it feels like home.

That was Aisha.

She had a softness that didn’t beg for attention. A steadiness that didn’t need proving. Loving her felt less like fireworks and more like breathing, natural, unforced, safe. Somewhere between laughter and late-night conversations that drifted into silence without awkwardness, I started seeing futures I hadn’t allowed myself to imagine before. The kind with shared mornings. The kind with familiarity that doesn’t scare you. The kind where love feels like rest.

I really loved her.

But love doesn’t only ask for feeling. It asks for stamina. And that’s where I failed.

We didn’t break because the love disappeared. We broke because pressure exposed things we hadn’t healed. She had walls, tall ones, built from past disappointments. I had wounds too, ones I didn’t know were still bleeding. Growing up, I didn’t feel loved the way I needed to be. So I learned early that affection was something you chased, not something you trusted.

So when Aisha loved me quietly, I mistook it for distance.
When she protected herself, I felt rejected.
When she needed patience, I felt unloved.

And instead of leaning closer, I leaned away.

That’s the part that hurts the most, not that things ended, but how. I didn’t fight. I didn’t stay. I didn’t communicate. I didn’t even try to understand her walls or explain my fears. I disappeared emotionally, convincing myself I was choosing peace when really, I was choosing escape.

Running has always felt easier than risking being unwanted.

Her sister Mariam believed in me. Her best friend Tomi did too. They were rooting for me in quiet ways, the kind of rooting that carries trust. And now, the silence from them feels heavier than noise. Because betrayal doesn’t always look like cheating. Sometimes it looks like leaving when someone needed you to stay.

Aisha cared deeply. I know that now more clearly than when I was inside the relationship. But care doesn’t always shout. Sometimes it whispers. Sometimes it hesitates. Sometimes it loves from a distance because it’s been hurt before. And because I’ve spent most of my life craving loud love, dramatic love, undeniable love, I didn’t know how to receive gentle love.

So I told myself she wasn’t enough.

When the truth was: I wasn’t patient enough.

There’s a specific kind of loneliness that comes after losing someone you didn’t stop loving, especially when you know you played a role in the ending. It’s not just missing their presence. It’s missing the version of yourself that existed around them. The laughter. The safety. The way someone’s name used to soften your day.

Some nights, I still think about her, not in fantasy, but in apology. In quiet sentences that begin with “If only…”

If only I had stayed.
If only I had learned to listen instead of defend.
If only I had understood that walls don’t mean absence, they mean history.
If only I had chosen effort over ego.

Because the truth is, I didn’t lose Aisha to fate.
I lost her to fear.

And fear is sneaky. It disguises itself as self-respect. As boundaries. As strength. But sometimes, fear is just cowardice dressed in self-care language. Sometimes, it’s not that you love someone too little, it’s that you love yourself too cautiously.

What hurts the most is knowing that if I had the chance again, I wouldn’t hesitate.

I wouldn’t go quiet.
I wouldn’t pull away.
I wouldn’t pretend I was okay when I wasn’t.
I wouldn’t disappear into pride when what I needed was vulnerability.
I wouldn’t run.

Because love doesn’t need perfection. It needs presence. It needs accountability. It needs someone brave enough to say, “I’m flawed, but I’m staying.”

And I wasn’t brave enough.

People talk about heartbreak as something someone does to you. But sometimes, heartbreak is something you do to yourself, by mishandling something beautiful. By dropping something fragile because you underestimated its weight. By walking away from a miracle because you thought it would be waiting when you came back.

It doesn’t always wait.

What makes this loss heavier is knowing she still cared when she left, not angrily, not dramatically, just tired. Tired of trying alone. Tired of explaining herself. Tired of loving someone who kept choosing distance when closeness was required.

And I don’t blame her.

Some exits aren’t punishments. They’re self-respect.

I wish I could tell her everything now, not to manipulate, not to beg, but to be honest. That I see her. That I understand her. That I know now her walls weren’t rejection, they were protection. That her quiet love wasn’t absence, it was depth. That her patience was rare, not weak.

That she loved me better than I understood how to receive.

Because the worst kind of regret isn’t losing someone who didn’t love you enough. It’s losing someone who did, and realizing too late that you were the one who didn’t know how to hold it.

I don’t write this hoping she’ll read it.
I write this because love deserves truth, even after it ends.
Because growth deserves confession.
Because healing deserves language.

And maybe, just maybe, because somewhere inside me, I still believe in second chances. Not necessarily from her. But from myself.

I know now that people don’t arrive healed. They arrive human. With scars. With fears. With histories. And love isn’t about demanding someone come whole, it’s about choosing to walk with them while they become.

I didn’t know that then.

But I know it now.

And if love ever gives me another Aisha, or even Aisha herself, I hope I meet her with steadiness instead of fear. With patience instead of pride. With courage instead of silence.

Because some people don’t teach you how to move on.

They teach you how to love better next time.

And some losses don’t break you.

They rebuild you.

Quietly.

From the inside out.