Disappointment

There was something you believed in. A person, a project, a path, a vision of what your life was supposed to look like. You made plans, leaned into a picture, hoped. And then it broke. Not slowly, not gently — but with a crack that leaves you hollow inside.

Disappointment is not simply sadness, but something more specific. It is what remains when an expectation meets reality and reality wins. The breath becomes shallow. The chest feels heavy, almost as if something has been taken out of it. Some feel it in the throat — that hard lump that lets neither tears nor words through. Others feel it in the stomach, as if the ground beneath the belly has suddenly given way.