Come Pick Up Your Clothes
- lipsandliberation
- Sep 3, 2025
- 3 min read
You continue to amaze me with the way you show your love for me. It’s deep, it’s intentional, and sometimes, it’s so overwhelming that I don’t know what to do with it. Right now, I need space not because I don’t care, but because I need to breathe and remind myself who I am outside of this connection.
We took a week apart, and it was harder than I ever imagined. Nine days without your voice, without your presence, felt like a lifetime. Still, I stayed positive, kept going on my fitness journey, and pushed forward partly because I knew you would be proud of me.
And yet, as I moved through those days, I kept asking myself: How important is the concern that I have with you? Am I holding onto that too tightly? Or am I folding because I love you so much that I’m willing to silence parts of myself? That’s why I need this time away not to punish you, but to heal the part of me that still questions whether I deserve a love like this.
When I folded your clothes and placed them gently in a bag in my garage, it was symbolic a way of organizing my emotions as neatly as I could. I told you to pick them up when I wasn’t home. But instead of taking your clothes, you left me my favorite cheesecake in the fridge. That simple gesture hit me like a wave. It made me want to cry, because a part of me still struggles to believe I am worthy of love given so freely.
Then you showed up. You didn’t speak at first you just cupped my face in your hands and kissed me softly, calling me your best friend. And for the first time in my life, I realized that my lover is also my best friend. That truth both terrifies me and heals me at the same time.
Later, you asked if I had heard Folded by Kehlani, and you told me that Mario’s remix felt like your response to me. I listened, and you were right it fit us perfectly. The lyrics mirrored everything we’ve been through, and it felt like the universe reminding me: I don’t need to let you go completely. I just need space to heal so I can meet your love with the openness it deserves.
Our birthdays are around the corner. My heart hopes we will celebrate them together, not as a way of clinging, but as a way of honoring what we’ve built.
I love you deeply so much that it scares me. And I hope that as I continue to heal, I’ll grow into the version of myself that can fully accept all you’ve been offering me all along.
I remember the moment you asked about Kehlani’s “Folded.” Listening back, it felt like the song was written for us. That act of folding clothes—your clothes in my garage became symbolic, like Kehlani’s words: “I have them folded, come pick them up while the door’s still open… it’s getting cold, but it’s not frozen.” It encapsulates longing, care, and that tender space between holding on and letting go. It reminds me that I don’t need to fully let you go I just need the time to heal so that, when the door reopens, I can welcome us with both arms ready.
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