Chapter Twenty-Nine: Flipping the Script

I didn’t set out to rewrite the story of love.
I set out to survive it.
Somewhere along the way, the Shimmer nudged me to loosen my grip on the pen and let the page turn itself.

Up until now, I’ve told this journey as a search for a new love. A year and a half ago, when I met the person I believed was The One — my soulmate, my Great Love — and my life turned upside down. We were turbulent and undeniable. I would look into his eyes and feel the gravity between us, a pull neither of us could resist. No matter how much we fought, no matter how much it hurt, we kept coming back. Oil and water, yes — but magnetized.

And it hurt.

What do you do when you meet someone who lights you up beyond language — someone you’d cliff-jump for — and then, once you’re in the pot, it’s too hot to live in?

The passion burned because the daily Alignment wasn’t there. There was so much love, and underneath it, fear.

Mine grew out of unworthiness. I’ve shared what it was like growing up — othered, outcast, ugly — never the person anyone pointed to and said, “He’s a catch.”
So I chased perfection: be the smartest, work the hardest, sculpt the best body. I starved. I overtrained. I disappeared into performance. The more I did, the less myself I became. Even when I looked in the mirror, I struggled to believe someone could look at me the way I looked at him.

The irony? I think he felt the same. He was breathtaking — inside and out — and still carried deep insecurity. He had his traumas; I had mine. Pain colored everything between us.

We wanted it to work. Desperately. But fear and control kept threading themselves through our love.

Cracks showed early. Not long after we met, he admitted he’d been chatting with others — testing the waters from fear: fear of losing me, fear of being alone. He assumed I was doing the same. It pierced an old wound — Am I enough? The sting didn’t fade; it rooted.

We recovered. We tried again. The pattern returned.

The good moments were incandescent: curled on the couch listening to his heartbeat; his silly jokes in bed; his hand grabbing mine in the street just because. For him, open affection wasn’t natural — he grew up with less welcome than I did.

But joy lived beneath a growing inability to hold conflict. When something came up, my insecurity flared. I shut down to keep the peace. I made myself the problem instead of treating the problem as ours. The silence inside me did more damage than any fight.

The final fight was inevitable. I sensed he was hiding something. Trust was already fragile — eroded by his history and my unhealed wounds. I didn’t understand the constant posting — half-naked, curated, chasing validation. Why seek the gaze of strangers when you have the gaze of someone who adores you? It wasn’t about infidelity. It was about the ache of not-enough. The dawning that his happiness wasn’t a thing I could give him — it had to be born within him. And something there was broken.

Staying — even if he was my soulmate — was hurting me.
With love that deep, cuts go to the bone.
I had to walk away for my sanity.

As much as it shattered me, as much as I believed he was the best I’d ever have, I let go.

And in that breaking, something else arrived: the Shimmer. The tarot. The quiet voice of the universe whispering: You will not be alone. You will find love. Your true one is waiting on your road.

I held onto that: maybe there was someone with his beauty, kindness, devotion — and stability. Someone who would talk when it was hard. Someone who wouldn’t withdraw.

So I left — carrying heartbreak and hope.

Months later, back in London to pack my flat, I reached out. It wasn’t romantic. It was practical. He’d left things: furniture he’d paid for, items that mattered. This was his chance to collect them before storage.

Beneath logistics, a quieter hum: What will it feel like to see him again? Would he be distant, moody, perform the indifference he sometimes wielded as control?

That’s not what happened.

He walked in with sadness in his eyes — and perseverance. He showed up even though it hurt. We moved through the flat slowly, deciding what was his, what could fit. Room by room, the months of tension began to melt.

We hadn’t spoken since I sent a letter — my whole heart on paper, asking for a new chapter built on honesty, safety, transparency. He never replied. I assumed silence meant no.

I was wrong.

He told me he was hurt I hadn’t checked in. I told him about the letter. He admitted he’d deleted it in a moment of pain — too upset to face it.

It hurt to hear.
It also clarified something: we’d been living in different stories. Dice rolled; we both believed narratives that weren’t true.

Then he did something extraordinary and brave: he stepped forward and hugged me.

I hugged him back.

We held each other a long time and quietly cried. Not bitter tears — truth tears.
We loved. It changed us.

Then he kissed me.

The pull was still there, undiminished. But something had changed. He was calmer. Sadder. Softer. I was clearer. Stronger.

The bond hadn’t faded. That meant something. It told me the story wasn’t over — only different.

I’m not trying to script what comes next. Maybe the Shimmer’s “long game” isn’t about a stranger at all. Maybe “new” sometimes means meeting someone you already know in a new way.

The next morning, in the now-empty flat, a stillness settled — not quite sadness, not relief. The air after a storm: everything smells different though nothing visible has changed.

For so long, our story was the loudest thing in the room. It shaped my choices, pulled me onto this path, cracked me open.

In the quiet, I could finally see it clearly: not a mistake, not a tragedy — a turning point.

The Shimmer had never promised neat shapes or sensible timelines. It offered a way to meet myself through him — through ache, longing, and the collapse of certainty.

Seeing him again didn’t reignite fantasy. It showed me how far I’ve come.

Once, I needed his love to prove I was enough.
Now, I know I already am.

Once, I clung to our story to feel safe.
Now, I can hold it lightly — a thread, not a tether.

Once, I thought this journey was about finding a new love.
Now, I see it’s about allowing life to meet me in ways I can’t predict.

Maybe our story stays as it is: a beautiful, complicated love that shaped us and then settled into memory.
Maybe, in some future we can’t yet see, the Shimmer brings us together in a new form. Because what is truly yours cannot be taken — from time, space, even lifetimes — it finds its way home.

But I don’t need to know the ending.
That’s the real shift.

For the first time in a long time, I’m not trying to write the last page. I’m letting the story breathe.

The Shimmer may hold the arc.
The words are mine now.

This isn’t a chapter about chasing a soulmate.
It’s about flipping the script — stepping off the page I thought was written for me and trusting the unfolding.
It’s about meeting love — in all its forms — with open hands.