Little punk unicorn

At some point during our friendship, I told Molly that he daughter looked like a punk rocker in a baby photo. I always wanted to do an imagined portrait of her as a teen in a band. That girl. Getting her to smile at you -  made you feel brilliant. It's her birthday today, a little 4 yr old. I thought I would get to watch her grow up.

I have a hard time on these days. These holidays, anniversaries, etc.  Some part of me knows it's stupid, but I told myself I get to at least celebrate the first ones. Get to send a small reminder, a text. I had planned gifts in the past, like even last summer I was already imagining, that's why I get these ones.

I don't think she understood the extent to which I loved them.
I don't think she ever felt ready enough to hold my heart, and thus, she didn't get to see how it beat for them. I couldn't sleep last night. Drama llama. I kept imagining the arguments, the repairs, the way forward down each possible path.  After a whole day she responded "thank you." Left it at that.
I reread the texts from 2 weeks before we broke up. Read how I was lost, and felt she was pulling away and investing all her energy in her new friend. She wrote back that she wasn't. That she loved me and was invested. Two weeks later we were broken up, without any acknowledgement of what had happened. It still hasn't been acknowledged to my satisfaction. It's been in these past months that I recognized the degree to which I wasn't acknowledged. It had always been easier to cover over my own hurts. But the pictures look genuine. My thoughts and dreams and prayers and actions were all genuine. This is a person I loved. And still love. And she isn't able to love me or doesn't want to. It drives me nuts. I don't even want her back, not after this, but I don't understand why this awful pain is  our choice. It's like the war. It's like the guns. It's like the environmental catastrophe... Why do we choose this?

Fear. I know she is horribly afraid. I recognize now that our entire relationship was based around her fears - and mine too. Not a basis for a relationship, I assure you. But it didn't have to be.
We could have figured it out. We are smart. I cared enough to get through it. Hell, I might still on some days.