The life we can’t get back

I know you miss us,
I know some part of you wants us back together.
But we can’t go back to the family we were,
because our children grew up while we were falling apart.

They’re adults now,
and the little family we knew exists only in memories.
We can’t rewind the years,
can’t make yesterday become tomorrow again.

So when you say you miss us,
I wonder what exactly you’re missing.
Do you miss the family standing before you now,
or the one that only exists in your memories?

Because I miss it too;
the noise, the laughter, the chaos, the ordinary days.
I miss the life we thought would last forever,
before forever slipped quietly away.

You broke my heart,
but losing us broke something deeper.
Because I didn’t just lose you,
I lost a version of my life I’ll never get back.

And that’s the cruelest part:
we’re all still here, but that family is gone.
Our children grew up, time kept moving,
and the home we knew became a memory we carry alone.

Maybe you want us back.
Maybe I do too, in some impossible way.
But we can’t be who we were,
we can only mourn who we were and decide what remains.

And maybe that’s what hurts the most:
I don’t know if you miss us, or who we used to be.
But I know I’ll always mourn that family,
because no matter how much we love each other, we can’t go back.