Jada stood in front of her full-length mirror, towel wrapped around her body, hair damp. The woman staring back wasn’t broken — but she wasn’t whole either.

She looked tired, yes, but there was a quiet resilience building behind her eyes. Like a flame that refused to die, even if it flickered.

She moved to her bookshelf and pulled down an old leather-bound journal. The spine was frayed, the pages yellowed at the edges. It was a relic of a different Jada — one that bled herself into poems and promises, desperate to be chosen.

She flipped to a random page. College. A boy named Darien.

I will shrink my voice to make room for your silence if it means you’ll let me stay.

She read another — post-grad, a bartender named Tyler.

Maybe if I love you like you’ve never been loved, you’ll forget how easy it is to leave.

A third. About Micah.

This time it’s real. This time he sees me. This time, maybe I won’t ruin it.

---

She closed the journal, sat on the edge of her bed, and let the truth come quietly:

She had never really known what love was.

She had known hunger. Longing. Sacrifice. But not love — not the kind that holds you without conditions, not the kind that says, “You don’t have to earn me.”

And suddenly, she felt grief. Not just for Micah, but for the girl in all those poems — the girl who thought disappearing into someone was the same thing as being seen.

---

She reached for a blank notebook and began to write, slower this time.

I thought love was staying when it hurt. I thought love was fixing what someone else broke in them. I thought love meant never walking away, even when I had to disappear to make it work.

But now… I think love is something quieter. Less fireworks, more steady flame. Not a place I vanish — a place I come home to.

She put the pen down and let herself breathe. The tears that came now weren’t from sadness. They were from release.

Micah may have been the last man she chased like that.

Because Jada was finally starting to choose herself.