Before the Sand Was Off My Shoes

Some pictures are hard to look at.

The beach was real.
That smile was real.
That sapphire was real.

That ring, though. The one we had talked about in those quiet pillow talks, half dream and half promise. We had talked about tattoos and Cracker Jack box rings too, and I would have been just as happy with either as long as it was from her. But fate had other plans. It was the exact ring we had talked about, and it was my size. Holy shit, we are really doing this.

For a second, the love rushes back in.

Then it snaps.

In an instant, I am not standing in that light anymore. I am in the middle of a Category 5 hurricane, and we have not even made it to bed yet.

We met at the end of 2011, but the chapter that changed me most did not begin until 2019. She had been part of my story long before we ever chose a different path. She was not just passing through. She knew me in my rawest, most vulnerable, most depleted, most desperate state. She knew my history, my hopes, my dreams. She helped raise my children. She knew my heart and saw my scars. I had survived storms I would not wish on anyone, and for a long time I believed she was standing right there beside me, shielding me from weather I could not even see coming.

That is part of what made it all so disorienting. Not because none of it was real, but because so much of it was. She was someone who once reminded me I was worthy without overgiving. Someone who taught me that respect, tenderness, and consistency were not too much to ask for. Someone who opened doors, brought flowers, and looked at me like I was still whole when life had done its best to convince me otherwise.

What she held was never casual. It was a part of me I had protected for years, shaped by survival, silence, and the hard work of learning how to trust my own body and heart again. After almost a decade of friendship and mutual recognition, it was more than that. She asked me to trust her with what I had never shared before, so I looked at her and said, “You promise?” She wiped a tear from my cheek and made promises I believe to my core. It is a moment I will never forget, because it gave me a feeling of true partnership I had never known before. She knew what that trust meant to me. She knew what it had cost me to offer it. That is why what followed did not feel like simple heartbreak. It felt like betrayal. I did not need her. I consciously chose her, every day.

Maybe that is why the memory cuts the way it does. It was never just about one day. It was years of loving her without conditions, years of standing in her corner, blessing what she believed she needed, and calling it love because that is exactly what it was. I let her go when letting her go broke me. I supported her when I was barely surviving myself. I opened the front door for her when she needed somewhere to land, even while my own life was caving in.

That is the kind of ache a photograph cannot hold.

It cannot show the history.
It cannot show the loyalty.
It cannot show how quickly a woman can go from feeling chosen to feeling small.

There are things from the last seven years I still cannot make my mouth repeat. Maybe one day I will, but I am who I am, and I likely will not.

I do not call myself foolish anymore.

I call myself honest.

I call myself brave.

Like my momma always said, “What others think of you is none of your business, baby girl, and you are only responsible for your side of the street.”

This lesson belongs there.

Peanut