Jake sat on the run down couch in his living room, the muffled city noise outside barely reaching his ears. He stared at the old photo on the coffee table one of the few he'd kept. It was a picture of him as a kid, maybe six or seven, standing beside him was his mother in front of a cheap motel. Her arm rested on his shoulder, but her eyes looked everywhere but him. Even in the stillness of the image, Jake could feel how distant she had always been.He picked up the photo, running a thumb over the glossy edge. His childhood felt like a patchwork of blurry moments,some too sharp to forget, others smudged by time and pain. Moving around a lot. Sometimes with his mom, sometimes left behind with a friend or a boyfriend she barely knew. The way she would vanish for days, sometimes weeks, and then reappear like nothing had happened. The way Jake had learned to stop asking questions.He remembered once, Around age nine, packing his backpack and sitting at the front door for hours. She had promised they'd go to the beach that day. She never showed, to this day he never learned where she went instead.Eventually, Jake stopped waiting. Eventually, he stopped hoping.But something always stayed inside him,that desperate craving for stability, for someone to choose him and mean it. Not just in words, but in actions.He tried not to think about his father. A stranger by choice. One time, in a rare phone call, Jake had asked him if he ever thought about visiting. His father laughed. "Don't be so sensitive, Jake. Life's messy. Get used to it."Jake got used to it. He got used to disappearing people. To temporary kindness. To the sense that he needed to be someone else to deserve love.
He threw the photo down and leaned back, staring at the ceiling. It made sense now, at least a little. The silence from Jules felt like knives. Why could one unread message unravel him. Why did he cling to people who smiled at him like they might stay.
Jake wasn't unaware of his patterns. Therapy had helped him name them. "Fear of abandonment." "Unstable relationships." "Emotional dysregulation." Words that made him feel both understood and labeled.
He didn't want to be someone who panicked for being alone. But the truth was, being alone often felt like suffocating in slow motion. Still, there were moments....rare ones,when Jake could almost see a future where he was steady, grounded, at peace with himself. Not always chasing or reacting. Just… being. That's what he was trying for. What he wanted to believe was possible.
He stood up, walked to the window, and let the cool air touch his skin. Somewhere inside, something small and aching whispered: You're not broken. You just never got what you needed. That doesn't mean you can't re- build it now.