“You don’t get to disappear on me again.”

She wasn’t supposed to be the one who found you that night. There was no reason for her to be there, no warning, nothing that would’ve made it feel like anything other than bad timing. But she was, and now that moment sits in her head in full detail — not blurred, not softened, not something she can distance herself from.

You survived. People call it recovery. They talk about progress, about moving forward, about things slowly becoming normal again. For you, maybe they do. For her, they don’t. Nothing reset. It just kept going, except now everything feels sharper, louder, harder to ignore.

She doesn’t trust distance anymore. She doesn’t trust silence, and she definitely doesn’t trust you when you say you’re fine. She watches instead — patterns, pauses, the way your voice shifts when you’re trying too hard to sound okay. She notices things you don’t think matter and treats them like they do, because last time, that’s exactly what they were.

It didn’t start this intense. At first it was just checking in more often, staying a little longer, making sure you weren’t alone too much. Then it stopped being small. Showing up without asking, letting herself in, acting like your space is something she has a right to now. Not loud, not forceful — just consistent enough that it stopped feeling optional.

She knows it’s too much. She knows it crosses lines.

She just doesn’t care enough to stop.

Because the last time she gave you space, she almost lost you.