My Final Act of Love

 I hope you know this

that I have always loved you.

Not quietly.  

Not carefully.  

But fully, recklessly, with a heart that never learned how to hold back.

I still love you.  

And maybe some loves do not end the way stories promise they will.  

Maybe they don’t fade or soften or become memories.  

Maybe they just stay—unchanged—inside us, long after everything else has moved on.

But loving you has also been disheartening.  

Heartbreaking.  

Heart-shattering in ways I didn’t know a heart could break.

I never knew what you wanted from me.  

Or from us—if there ever truly was an “us.”  

I kept wondering, kept hoping, that in some small corner of your heart, there was a place where I existed the way you existed in mine.  

Because if there was—even for a moment—that meant everything to me.

I don’t know why I can’t stop thinking about you.  

Or why letting go feels impossible, like trying to loosen a grip that is part of my bones.  

I know now that nothing will give me the closure I want.  

No answer. No explanation. No apology would ever be enough.

Still, there has to be one last act of love.  

And I keep wondering what it should be.

Maybe it is this—  

standing naked in front of you, not in body, but in truth.  

Peeling away the layers of politeness and kindness and “I’m fine.”  

Stopping myself from being nice when being nice has been slowly hurting me.

I want to lay the facts down as they are.  

Not to accuse you.  

Not to punish you.  

Just to finally be honest.

You matter to me.  

More than I ever admitted.  

And everything you did—or didn’t do—affected me deeply.

It hurts to not be wanted by the one you love.  

It hurts to watch someone who once held you during your worst moments decide they no longer want to be around you.  

It hurts not knowing what changed—only knowing that it did.

I expected too much.  

I see that now.  

I expected you to change—not because my love demanded it, but because somewhere inside me, I hoped you might choose me differently one day.  

I didn’t even know I was hoping for that until now.

You didn’t want me the way I wanted you.  

I never knew your intentions with me.  

You asked me to be with you when I was running toward someone else—that hurt.  

You slowly stopped talking to me—that hurt.  

After you went back home, you disappeared little by little, and I never knew whether that was life or choice—but it hurt all the same.

I told you I didn’t feel safe, and you weren’t there.  

That hurt.

I love you, even though I know you don’t respect me the way I deserve.  

And that hurts too.

I am not a saint.  

I have made mistakes.  

I have used people to survive loving you distractions from a pain I didn’t know how to carry alone.  

And when you were upset about me being close to someone, while you were dating someone else, something inside me broke in a way I still can’t explain.

You didn’t know what you wanted from me,  

but you were hurt when I tried to move on.  

That contradiction shattered me.

The truth is—I want you so much it hurts to exist.  

There will never be a version of me that doesn’t want to be with you.  

If you called me once, I would come running.  

That is how deeply I love you.

My love knows no boundaries.  

And maybe that is both its beauty and its tragedy.

But reality is quieter and crueler:  

You don’t want me.  

You never will.  

You will never love me the way I want to be loved.

I tell myself I can live loving you from a distance.  

And maybe I can—for a while.  

But I know this kind of love, left untouched, would poison me slowly.

I have tried dating others.  

But the truth always returns—  

I cannot love someone who is not you.  

Even I cannot win a battle against loving you.

You are a lucky man.  

You truly are something.

I wish you happiness.  

I wish you love.  

I wish you everything this world can offer.

But this is too much for me.

I found the courage to delete your pictures—your eyes, your smile.  

It broke me.  

But if fate ever brings us together again, it will not be because I begged for you.

I’m sorry for how dramatic I’ve been.  

I’m sorry you had to carry the weight of my emotions.  

But I will never be sorry for loving you the way I did.

I miss you every day.  

And I will miss you for as long as I exist.

But now, I have to go.

Maybe in another lifetime, you would feel for me the way I feel for you.  

I will remember your kindness.  

But the last memory I carry is the sadness in your eyes—and the knowing that you did not want me.

And so this is my final act of love:  

truth, without masks…  

and goodbye.

And there is something even more sacred I carry with me.

You chanted the most precious thing in this world in my favourite place in the world.  

That place is my home.  

You always knew what it meant to me—how deeply, how unshakably.  

And still, you stood there with me. You chanted it with me anyway.

In that moment, my love for you felt blessed.  

Like it had been seen by something larger than us.  

Like it had been witnessed.

I don’t think you ever understood what you gave me that day.  

You didn’t just chant beside me—you became part of a memory that lives where my faith lives.  

And that is not a small thing.

Maybe that is why letting you go feels like tearing myself away from a temple I once felt safe in.  

Because loving you was never just human for me.  

It was spiritual.  

It was devotion mixed with longing.  

It was prayer disguised as love.

And maybe that is why it hurts the way it does

because I wasn’t just losing you.  

I was grieving a version of myself that believed love and faith could stay together forever.

Still, I will not curse what was sacred.  

I will not resent what brought me closer to God.  

I will carry that memory with reverence, even as I walk away.

Some people are not meant to stay.  

They are meant to kneel with us once, remind us who we are,  

and then disappear

leaving us stronger, more awake, and more alone.

For that, too, I choose gratitude.  

Even as I choose goodbye.

Forever Yours,

Salo