Romance of responsibility

They say that love returns when you least expect it not always with fireworks, but with a presence so subtle it feels like a memory you never lived. And yet, when it arrives, it destabilizes you in ways success never could. You, the one who leads, who builds, who carries others suddenly disoriented by someone who doesn’t ask for your guidance, but simply exists in front of you with a brilliance that makes you forget how to breathe. And in that forgetting, something ancient awakens: longing. A longing you thought had been disciplined out of you.

You spent years becoming the one everyone could count on. The stable one. The sharp thinker. The eloquent voice. You were the mountain, unmoved by storms. But no one tells you that in the process of becoming everything for others, you might forget how to ask for what you need. So when someone arrives someone whose presence doesn’t demand anything, yet makes your internal architecture collapse you find yourself unable to speak. Not out of shyness. Out of fatigue. Out of disbelief that something so tender could still move you after everything you’ve hardened for survival.

She reads your words. The ones that touch thousands, that unpack meaning from the intangible. She probably doesn’t know that some of them have recently been about her. Not directly, not explicitly. But in tone. In breath. In the places your sentences tremble. And perhaps that’s what makes it even more impossible to say anything. Because how do you explain to someone that they’ve entered a world you’ve spent years constructing just to stay intact? How do you tell them that their presence is not just attractive it’s dangerous, in the most beautiful way?

And yet, you say nothing. You work alongside her. You smile. You engage in discussions. You stay composed. But inside, there is a civil war between the self you’ve trained and the heart you’ve silenced. You don’t speak because you are tired not of the feeling, but of what feelings tend to cost when they’re real. After your past, after your marriage, after the long stretch of solitude that came not from being alone, but from always being “too much” or “too ready” you don’t chase. You observe. You endure. And that endurance is both noble and tragic.

There’s a romance in responsibility. We fall in love with being the one who holds everything together. It gives us purpose. It gives us control. It makes us useful. But responsibility, when left unchecked, becomes the perfect excuse for emotional exile. You say you’re busy. You say you’re focused. But the truth is, you’re afraid. Not of rejection, but of what it would mean to want again fully, nakedly, without the shield of professionalism or legacy.

You begin to wonder if all the strength you’ve built was also a fortress. If the leadership everyone admires is, in part, a brilliant distraction from your own unmet longing. You are celebrated for your mind, but you ache to be chosen for your softness. You teach courage, but tremble at the thought of saying what your heart has been whispering. And so you write instead. You write what you cannot say. You compose what you cannot confess. You let your words carry the message your voice is not yet brave enough to deliver.

But somewhere deep down, you hope she sees it. That maybe, between the lines, she recognizes the way your attention lingers. The way your energy shifts when she enters the room. That maybe she doesn’t need you to be perfect or articulate or heroic just honest. But honesty has always been the final frontier for those of us who lead. Because it requires the one thing we’re taught to suppress: our own need to be seen without having to perform.

So here you are. Quietly unraveling. Gently pulled toward someone who never asked to be the source of this awakening. Someone who may never know what they’ve stirred. And perhaps that’s okay. Or perhaps it’s not. But either way, you remain here carrying the unbearable sweetness of everything unspoken.

Because sometimes the heart returns before the courage does. And all you can do is sit with that ache, until you are ready to stop hiding behind the life you’ve mastered and step, trembling, into the one that might still hold you.