“They Called It A Home“

“They Called It a Home”

They called it a home.

But it never felt like one.

Not to me.

To everyone else, we looked normal. Maybe even perfect. Clean house. Decent clothes. Smiles in public. But behind those walls…

God, it was different.

Love came with conditions.

If I got good grades, if I stayed quiet, if I didn’t make mistakes—then maybe they’d look at me with something close to approval. Not love. Not pride. Just… less disappointment.

I don’t remember hugs. I remember cold silences.

I remember being called “too sensitive” when I cried and “too lazy” when I was exhausted.

They made me feel like I had to earn their affection.

But no matter what I did, it was never enough.

Sometimes I wonder—was I really that hard to love?

Or were they just that incapable of giving it?

The damage wasn’t loud.

It didn’t leave bruises you could see.

But it made me question my worth, every single day.

It taught me to hide my feelings, to second-guess my instincts, to apologize for simply existing.

Even now, I carry that weight.

In relationships, I flinch when people raise their voices, even if they’re not angry.

I overthink every word I say, every move I make.

And sometimes, I still catch myself waiting—waiting for someone to say, “You’re doing great.”

Waiting for the love I should’ve gotten without begging.

But I’m tired of waiting.

I’m slowly, painfully, teaching myself that I wasn’t the problem.

That I was a child doing their best.

And they… they were the adults who failed me.

This isn’t a pity story. It’s a survival story.

Because I’m still here.

And one day, I’ll build a home that feels nothing like the one I came from.

A real home.

With warmth.

With peace.

With love that doesn’t need to be earned.

In another universe, you stayed CHAPTER(5-8)

 CHAPTER 5 – Universe Theory

I don’t remember when I first heard it—that idea about infinite universes. Maybe it was in a podcast playing faintly through my headphones as I walked to work, pretending to care. Maybe it was a line in a book I don’t remember picking up. Or maybe it was whispered by your ghost, sitting in the corner of my room one night, when sleep refused to come.

They say every choice we make splits reality. That somewhere, in some strange and silent version of the world, you didn’t leave.

The thought takes root like rot. Spreads like it, too. Quiet, invisible, irreversible.

I started looking. Not with telescopes or equations—I’m no scientist. My method was desperation. Late nights and rabbit holes. Videos titled "Quantum Immortality and the Multiverse." Forums filled with the unstable, the grieving, the unwell. I devoured it all like it was scripture.

I found an old book at a thrift store. No dust jacket, pages yellowed and cracked. A forgotten text on consciousness and dimensions. The margins were filled with someone else’s handwriting—wild, frantic notes, arrows between paragraphs, circles around words like “bleed-through” and “anchoring frequencies.”

I underlined those, too. Not because I understood them, but because I needed them to be real.

Every night I would sit in bed, the book in my lap, the air heavy with your absence. I tried the breathing exercises. The meditations. The lucid dreaming techniques.

And the dreams changed.

They became louder. Brighter. Longer. Not just flickers anymore, not echoes. They began to feel like... places. As if I wasn’t dreaming but remembering.

One night, I woke up crying. I didn’t know why. The sheets were soaked, and the taste of your name clung to my tongue. I touched my cheek and pulled away damp fingers. The memory of your fingers brushing mine at breakfast had felt real. Too real.

I wrote everything down.

Pages and pages of it. Timelines, objects, feelings, fragments of conversations. I mapped out my dreams like they were constellations, trying to find patterns. One world kept returning—one where you stayed. It was always warmer there. Always quieter. The version of me there was thinner, sharper, more composed. The version of you was softer around the eyes.

I began to feel like I was living half-lives. The real world blurred. The dream world sharpened.

One morning, I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize my own eyes. They looked borrowed. Or maybe stolen.

That was the first day I started to believe I might be going mad.

And the worst part?

I didn’t care.

---

CHAPTER 6 – The Woman on the Train

She had your hair.

That was the first thing. The way it curled slightly at the ends, like it defied being tamed. She stood on the platform with a book in her hands and headphones in, swaying ever so slightly. I shouldn’t have noticed her. I shouldn’t have looked twice. But my heart stopped like it recognized something my eyes couldn’t.

She boarded the same train as me.

I sat across the aisle, pretending not to stare, stealing glances as the city blurred past the windows. She read slowly, lips parting every now and then as if she was mouthing the words. And then she laughed—a quiet, breathy thing—and my stomach turned inside out.

It wasn’t your laugh. But it tried to be.

She caught me looking. I glanced away, but not fast enough.

"You okay?" she asked.

Just that. Simple. Soft.

The same way you used to ask it when I stared off into nowhere, lost in my own head. Same cadence. Same gentleness.

I nodded. Managed a smile that didn’t fit.

"Sorry," I said. "You just… reminded me of someone."

She smiled, and there was kindness there. Not recognition, not anything mystical. Just a woman being kind to a stranger unraveling quietly across from her.

The train screeched to a halt. She stood, tugging her bag over her shoulder.

And just before stepping off, she looked back and said, "Hope you find them."

My blood froze.

Because that was something you said. Not often. Just once, maybe twice, when we were looking for lost keys or old photos or meaning in the middle of a fight. But you said it.

Hope you find them.

I stood up too quickly. Followed her onto the platform, heart thudding like a warning. But the crowd had swallowed her whole. She was gone.

Back on the train, I sat in her seat. It was still warm.

And there, tucked into the seat pocket in front of me, was her book.

I opened it to a random page.

The underlined sentence read: "Some doors only open when you stop pretending they’re closed."

I don’t know how long I sat there, but by the time I moved, the train had made three full loops and no one had asked me to leave.

---

CHAPTER 7 – Breach

It happened on a Tuesday. Or a Thursday. I’m not sure anymore. Time doesn’t behave the way it used to.

The dream began like all the others.

You in the kitchen. Rain on the window. That song playing softly. I walked in. You turned and smiled. Everything normal. Everything perfect.

But this time, it didn’t end.

I didn’t wake up.

Hours passed. Maybe days. We cooked together. We danced. We fought about who left the cabinet open. You made that joke about the dog we never had, and I laughed until I cried.

It felt too real.

When I finally woke, my heart was racing. My mouth was dry.

And there was a mark on my wrist.

A small, crescent-shaped scar. I knew it instantly. I’d gotten it in the dream, cutting lemons for the pie you wanted to make. In the dream, you’d kissed it and said I was lucky I didn’t need stitches.

But now, here it was.

Real. Raw.

I touched it with shaking fingers.

This wasn’t a memory. It wasn’t a hallucination.

It was something else.

A breach.

I started checking everything after that. Objects moved. The photo on the fridge was flipped upside down. The blanket we used to fight over appeared on the bed again, though I was sure I’d boxed it up months ago.

Your mug. The one with the chip on the rim.

It reappeared.

No dust. No cracks. Like it had never left.

I held it in my hands like it was made of glass, afraid it would vanish the moment I blinked.

But it didn’t.

That night, I slept with it next to me on the pillow.

I woke with it still there.

And that’s when I knew: the walls were bleeding.

The dream was leaking in.

---

CHAPTER 8 – The Choice

I stopped going to work.

The emails piled up. The calls stopped coming. My phone lay face-down on the floor, battery dead, screen cracked. It felt like a relic from another life—a life I no longer had interest in maintaining.

My apartment turned into a shrine. Papers everywhere. Diagrams on the wall. Maps of dreams. Thread connecting places and phrases and dates I wasn’t sure were real anymore. I tracked weather patterns, song lyrics, dreams, smells, textures. Trying to find the constants.

There was always one.

You.

In every dream, in every version, you stayed.

Sometimes we were older. Sometimes we were still in college. Once, we lived in a cabin in the woods and had a dog named Jupiter. Once, you were blind and I read to you every night from books we both hated.

But always, always, you stayed.

I began to draw it. The place. The apartment from the dreams. Down to the creaks in the floorboards, the scratch on the doorframe from when we moved the couch in. I built it out of memory and longing.

And then I began to build the door.

In the real world.

It started with wood I found behind the dumpster. Tools from a pawn shop. I carved the frame to match the dream. Symbols etched into the sides. Ones I didn’t understand but saw in visions.

Each night, I sat before it.

Each night, I whispered: "Bring me home."

And the door waited.

I knew what people would say. That I’d lost it. That grief had finally snapped the last thread of sanity.

But they didn’t see the mug. They didn’t see the scar. They didn’t feel your ghost crawling into bed with me, warm and real

.

They didn’t believe.

I did.

And I chose.

I chose the dream.

Because it was the only place where you stayed.

Because it was the only place I still remembered how to breathe.

In another universe, you stayed (1-4)

 (CHAPTER 1-4)

CHAPTER 1 – The Look

The moment you left didn’t feel like heartbreak. It felt like being erased.

They never tell you how quiet endings are. How surgical. How they slip in and out like ghosts, stealing everything and leaving the lights on.

You didn’t slam the door. You didn’t even raise your voice. You just looked at me—blank and distant, like I was the answer to a question you regretted asking. Your eyes didn’t rage or weep. They were worse than that.

They were indifferent.

I said something. I don’t remember what. Maybe I asked if you were okay. Maybe I begged without meaning to. Maybe I just breathed wrong. Whatever it was, you flinched like I touched a wound I couldn’t see. Then you stood, gathered your coat like you’d been planning this for years, and walked out.

No goodbye. No reason. Just silence.

That look has lived in my mind ever since, gnawing its way through every memory of you that used to feel safe. It replaced the sound of your laugh. It drowned out the warmth of your voice. It eclipsed everything. You didn’t leave like someone heartbroken. You left like someone healed.

And I—

I stayed.

Like an idiot, like a goddamn relic, still clinging to a language we both forgot how to speak. I stayed inside the apartment we built, now hollow and echoing, where even the furniture feels like it’s trying to forget me.

The silence you left behind didn’t just fill the room—it filled me. It wrapped itself around my bones like ice, taught my heart how to flinch instead of beat. And I wake up every day pretending I’m not haunted. Pretending I don’t still hear the echo of your absence in the spaces where you used to breathe.

I’ve become a parody of myself. Smiling when I’m expected to, nodding like I give a shit. I make coffee I don’t drink. I laugh at jokes I don’t hear. People walk past me like I’m wallpaper in their lives—background noise. Set dressing.

But when night comes, the mask slips.

That’s when the dreams begin.

In them, you never left. You’re in the kitchen humming that song you used to butcher on purpose just to make me laugh. You lean against the counter, sipping from that chipped mug we swore we’d throw away and never did. You say my name like it still means something. You kiss me like I’m not the man you walked out on.

And in those dreams, I believe it. I believe I never lost you.

But then I wake up.

And reality hits like a shovel.

Another morning, another grave dug in my chest. I bury hope again, scoop by scoop, trying not to scream. Your ghost sits across from me at breakfast—smug, quiet, patient. It watches me crumble and says nothing. Just like you.

And the worst part?

I think I deserve it.

I think I always did.

They say there are infinite universes. Somewhere, you stayed. Somewhere, I was better. Kinder. Smarter. Enough.

But not here.

Here, I rot in the ruins of the life we almost had. And all that’s left of you is that look.

That fucking look.

CHAPTER 2 – Routine Ghost

The mornings don’t get easier.

I wake up with a weight pressing on my chest, like some invisible hand has anchored me to the mattress. The alarm clock shrieks, but it’s barely enough to pull me from the haze. I lie there, eyes open, staring at the ceiling, tracing cracks like they hold answers. Eventually, I force my limbs to move. Drag myself into the bathroom, brush my teeth, shower under cold water that feels like punishment.

Every motion feels mechanical—as if I’m just going through the motions of someone else's life.

I get dressed, usually something neutral, forgettable. I don’t care how I look anymore. I don’t care about much, except the fact that I can still pay my rent.

The commute to work is a blur of gray streets and silent people. I avoid eye contact. I keep my head down. I’m a ghost walking among the living.

At the office, I sit in the same seat I’ve had for years, pretending I’m focused on the screen. I answer emails with hollow words, nod when someone talks, smile when it’s expected. I’m a ghost in a suit.

No one notices the cracks beneath the surface.

Sometimes, a colleague asks if I’m okay.

“Fine,” I say. The lie tastes like poison in my mouth.

There’s no point in explaining. No one would understand. How could they? They haven’t seen the way the silence fills my apartment like a poison. The way my phone never buzzes with your name anymore. The way the days stretch out endlessly, empty and gray.

Lunch is alone, of course. I sit in a corner café, nursing coffee that’s gone cold. I watch couples and friends laugh, their voices a cruel soundtrack to my loneliness. I wonder if they can see the hole inside me. Probably not. I’m good at hiding it.

Back at my desk, I keep telling myself I’m fine. I pretend the ache isn’t spreading, that I’m not unraveling thread by thread. But every smile I fake is a little more brittle. Every joke I laugh at is a little more forced.

When I get home, the apartment is silent but for the hum of the refrigerator and the distant city noise. I move through it like a specter—making dinner I don’t eat, pouring coffee I don’t drink, sitting on the couch pretending it’s company.

Sometimes, I catch myself talking to the empty chair across from me. Whispering your name. Asking questions I know won’t be answered.

And then the nights come. When the world finally shuts up, my mind wakes up. When I’m left alone with the ghosts.

The silence is loudest then. It presses in on me until I feel like I’m suffocating.

I try to scream, but the sound gets stuck in my throat. I try to cry, but the tears never come.

Instead, I rot. Quietly. Intentionally.

And no one notices.

CHAPTER 3 – The Dream

When night falls, I’m never really alone.

Because in the dark, the walls fall away.

Behind my eyelids, another world waits. A place where the sun sets softly behind familiar streets, where the air smells like fresh rain and burning wood. Where the light feels warm and real, not like a spotlight exposing every crack in my skin.

In that world, you stayed.

The apartment is alive there. Music plays softly from an old record player. The couch is cluttered with books and half-finished mugs of coffee. The windows are fogged with rain, and the scent of cinnamon drifts from the kitchen.

You move through the rooms like you belong there. You’re laughing at something I said—a stupid joke I can’t remember—but your smile fills the space like it’s the only thing that matters.

You make coffee the way you always did, carefully, like it’s a ritual. The chipped mugs sit side by side on the table, just like they always did. You hand me one, your fingers brushing mine, and the world stills.

We sit across from each other, sharing silences that don’t hurt. We talk about everything and nothing—inside jokes no one else would understand, plans for weekends we never got to have, the way you always hated the way I left my shoes by the door.

You read aloud something I wrote, stumbling over the words but smiling like they’re poetry. You say my name like it’s a prayer, like it’s the only word you want to say.

I reach across the table and take your hand, the way I always dreamed I could.

In that world, I’m enough.

In that world, you love me.

But it’s fragile. Like smoke between my fingers.

Because when the alarm rings, when the harsh light floods the room, it all shatters.

I wake up alone. Your side of the bed empty and cold. The scent of cinnamon and rain gone.

I sit there, heart pounding, trying to hold onto the fading warmth.

But it slips away.

And I’m left with nothing but the ache.

CHAPTER 4 – Fractured Reflections

The apartment feels smaller now—like the walls are closing in on me, squeezing the air from my lungs.

I found the photo yesterday. A forgotten snapshot wedged between the pages of a book I hadn’t touched in years. You, laughing. Me, half-smiling. The kind of smile I know now was never enough to hold onto.

I stared at it too long, tracing the curve of your mouth, the light in your eyes. The memory hit like a punch—sharp and unrelenting.

How could something so alive feel so dead?

I put the photo face down, but the image burned behind my eyelids for hours. It chased me through the day like a shadow, refusing to be ignored.

I walk through the apartment like a stranger in my own skin. Every corner holds a memory. The spot where you used to sit, the coffee stain on the counter I never cleaned, the worn blanket we shared.

Each one fractures me a little more.

I catch myself talking to the silence again. Whispering things I can’t say aloud. “Why did you leave?” “Did you ever love me?” “Who am I now without you?”

The questions have no answers.

The mirror mocks me every morning. A face I barely recognize stares back—hollow eyes, a jaw clenched tight enough to break. I wonder if I’m still me or just a shadow of the man you left behind.

Sometimes I think if I stare long enough, I’ll see the version of myself from the other universe—the one you stayed for. But it’s just a reflection, cold and unforgiving.

I’m haunted by what I was and what I am now—the space between the two widening like a wound that ne

ver heals.

I don’t know how to be whole without you.

And maybe I never will.