If I Ever Lose You, I Will Not Survive It

If I ever lose her, I won’t just hurt—I’ll break.

Booba, I need you to hear me. I need you to listen with the part of your heart that knows how hard it is for me to say this without shaking. If I ever lose you, I will not survive it. And I don’t mean that as a figure of speech. I don’t mean it to sound poetic. I mean it as a truth. A full, brutal, terrifying truth. My body may keep moving. My face may smile. I may still show up where I’m expected. But inside, I will be gone.

Because you are not just someone I love. You are the part of me that holds me together when everything else is falling apart. You are the voice I hear before I fall asleep and the thought I wake up to. Every single morning, my hand reaches for my phone before my eyes even open. Not to check the world. Just to check on you. To see that your name is still there. That your message came in. That you are still mine. That we are still okay.

My heart has made a habit out of you. A rhythm. A silence. A kind of peace I didn’t know I needed. And when I say I will not survive losing you, it’s because I have already placed you in my forever. I have already designed my life around your laughter, your habits, your softness, your madness. I have seen you holding our child in a living room filled with sunlight and music. I have seen us aging together. Fighting and making up. Growing through seasons and surviving what others couldn’t. I have already chosen you a thousand times in my mind. And if life ever tells me I cannot have you anymore, something in me will never recover.

I don’t love you lightly. I don’t love with conditions. I don’t hold back. When I gave you my heart, I gave you all of it. The fragile parts, the insecure parts, the jealous parts, the overthinking parts, the protective parts. All of me is already wrapped around the idea of you. You are not just someone I am in love with. You are the place my soul rests. The home my heart keeps running back to.

Even when we fight. Even when I feel hurt. Even when I am silent. The truth is I am still thinking about you. I am still worrying about you. I am still praying that you are eating well. That you are sleeping okay. That your chest is not too tight. That your mind is not too heavy. I can be right, I can be upset, I can feel ignored. But the moment I hear you break, the moment I hear you tired or sad, everything in me melts. I forget myself. I forget what we were even arguing about. All I want to do is protect you. All I want is for you to be okay.

That is how deeply I love you. And maybe that is why the fear of losing you keeps me up at night. Because I know I will not be okay. I know my mind will not hold. I know my heart will not stay still. I know I will walk into rooms and see your ghost in every corner. I will hear your name in conversations you are not even part of. I will check my phone even when I know there is nothing there. I will still expect you to message me. I will still hope you are thinking about me. And when I finally realize that you are not, that you are not coming back, that someone else is calling you baby, someone else is seeing you laugh and wear those ridiculous oversized shirts you love, someone else is holding the body I used to hold with prayer and fire, that realization will break something in me I don’t know how to repair.

And as terrible as this sounds, as much as people would call it selfish, the truth is I would rather hear that God has taken you. I would rather hear that you left this world in peace than find out that you are smiling in another man’s arms. Not because I want you gone. Never. But because if God took you, at least I would know you left loving me. You left while I still had you. I would mourn you like a widow, not like a man who got replaced. I would cry and break and feel pain I cannot describe, but I would have peace. The peace of knowing I did not lose you to choice or distance or pride. I lost you to time. To heaven. To something that none of us could control. And I would carry that loss like a wound that never heals, but I would know that I had you until the end. That you were mine until God called you home.

But if I ever have to see you with someone else, if I ever see you post your hand with a ring that another man placed there, if I ever hear your voice say someone else’s name with the same affection you used for me, I will not make it. I will not be able to hold myself together. My body may keep going, but my soul will sink. I will block your number. I will delete our chats. I will avoid the places you might be. But somehow, the world will still show you to me. Instagram will still push your picture to me. People will still tag you. Someone will post a story with you in the background. And each time it happens, my heart will tear all over again.

I know I am not perfect. I know I am still learning how to communicate properly. I know I struggle with emotions, with control, with letting go of my fears. But I am trying. I am trying every single day. I am learning how to show up better. I am learning how to stop letting anxiety win. I am learning how to speak when I want to shut down. I am learning how to love you in a way that keeps you safe and free at the same time. I am trying, not because I have to, but because you are worth every effort. Every discomfort. Every difficult conversation. Every moment of reflection.

You are worth it. You are the only one I want. The only one I have prayed for with my whole chest. The only one I see beside me in every version of my future. You are the person I would do anything to protect, even from myself. The person whose joy matters to me more than being right. The person I want to grow with, fall with, rebuild with.

I would rather die than watch another man take my place. I would rather disappear from this world than hear you laugh like that for someone else. This love I have for you is not ordinary. It is not small. It is heavy. It is loud. It is quiet. It is constant. It is burning. It is soft. It is selfish. It is healing. It is everything.

If I ever lose you, Booba, then I have lost the most important part of myself. And there is no coming back from that.