The Chair Is Still Here: Whosoeverwill…

Beloveds,

There is a chair beside me.

I did not put it there because I cannot sit alone.

I put it there because I have something I would like to share.

Love.

Friendship.

Conversation.

Truth.

Laughter.

Quiet.

The ordinary and extraordinary pieces of life that become a little richer when someone chooses to experience them with us.

The chair means:

There is room for you here.

🪑

You do not have to earn it.

You do not have to arrive with all the right words.

You do not have to agree with me about everything.

You do not have to hide the complicated parts of yourself before you sit down.

You do not have to promise that you will never disappoint me.

The chair is an offering.

Not a contract.

Not a debt.

Not a leash.

An offering.

And yet…

Sometimes I look at the chair and wish it were not empty.

💔

That does not mean I do not know how to be alone.

It does not mean I am incomplete.

It simply means I would sometimes like someone to choose the chair.

Not because I begged.

Not because I chased.

Not because I convinced somebody that I was worth sitting beside.

I would simply like someone to see the place beside me and think:

I would like to sit there.

But I have been thinking about the person standing across the room, too.

👀

Maybe they see the chair.

Maybe they even want to sit.

But maybe they remember another chair.

Maybe someone welcomed them before.

They sat down.

They trusted.

They unpacked pieces of themselves they did not show everybody.

And then they were hurt.

Maybe they were used.

Maybe somebody wanted what they could provide but was not particularly interested in who they were.

Maybe their kindness became an expectation.

Maybe somebody only came around when they needed something.

Maybe they were manipulated.

Maybe something shared in confidence became gossip or ammunition later.

Maybe they were abandoned after finally allowing themselves to depend on someone.

Maybe they were ghosted.

No argument.

No explanation.

No goodbye.

Just someone who was there…

and then wasn’t.

An occupied chair one day.

An empty chair the next.

💔🪑

Experiences like that can teach a person not to get too comfortable.

Not to trust an invitation too quickly.

Not to believe every person who says, “There is room for you here.”

So perhaps they are not rejecting your chair.

Perhaps they are remembering another one.

Perhaps they are wondering:

How long before you change your mind?

What will this eventually cost me?

What happens when you know all of me?

Will you still want me here when I have nothing useful to give you?

What happens if I disappoint you?

What happens if I get comfortable and you disappear?

Those questions did not necessarily begin with you.

And the person standing beside your chair does not owe you the story of how they got them.

🥹

That matters.

We can become so determined to convince someone that our chair is safe that we begin demanding an explanation for why they will not sit.

But nobody owes us their wounds as an admission ticket.

Maybe we simply leave the chair there.

And live what the chair means.

Because a chair does not become trustworthy because we announce:

This chair is safe.

Trust is built in what happens over time.

In consistency.

In truth.

In boundaries.

In what happens after disagreement.

In what happens when someone tells us no.

In whether something whispered from that chair remains there.

In whether someone still matters when they have nothing to offer us.

In whether the chair remains a place for their whole self instead of only the parts we find comfortable.

Maybe one day they look at us and realize:

You meant it.

And maybe they sit.

Maybe they do not.

Because this is where two words have been sitting with me today:

Whosoeverwill…

🌎🪑

There is freedom in those words for both of us.

I am free to offer the chair.

You are free to accept it.

You are free to approach slowly.

You are free to sit for a while.

You are free to stand nearby until you know what you think.

And yes, you are free to decide that my chair simply is not where you want to sit.

That may hurt.

But an invitation that does not allow someone to say no is not really an invitation.

Whosoeverwill also leaves room for whosoever won’t.

The chair does not accuse.

It does not ask:

Why haven’t you come?

It does not say:

After everything I offered you…

It does not tell the person who offered it:

Nobody sat down, so there must be something wrong with you.

It simply remains what it was always intended to be:

Room.

🪑

And there is another possibility.

Maybe the chair we think is empty…

isn’t.

Maybe we have been watching the doorway for the person we hoped would come while overlooking someone who has quietly been sitting nearby all along.

The friend who checks on us.

The person who remembers.

The one who listens.

The one who celebrates something small because they know it was enormous to us.

The person who keeps showing up.

They may not be the person we imagined in that chair.

That does not mean their presence does not count.

Sometimes we should look beside us before deciding nobody came.

And sometimes…

the chair truly is empty.

There may be history in that emptiness.

Someone once sat there.

Life changed.

Distance came.

A relationship changed.

Someone left.

Someone died.

Sometimes nobody did anything wrong.

An empty chair can hurt precisely because something beautiful once occupied it.

That does not make the relationship a failure.

Sometimes an empty chair is evidence that something mattered.

💔

And perhaps, someday, somebody else sits beside us.

Not as a replacement.

People are not interchangeable.

They bring their own story.

Their own laughter.

Their own way of being present.

A new person does not erase the person who came before.

Life simply made room for another connection.

But there is something else I want us to remember.

The person offering the chair is taking a risk, too.

Opening space in our lives means allowing ourselves to be known.

It means admitting:

I would like your company.

There is vulnerability in that sentence.

So the chair needs boundaries, too.

Whosoeverwill does not mean whosoever wants unlimited access may have it.

The chair sits inside somebody’s life.

Love without an admission price does not mean love without boundaries.

Both people matter.

The person sitting.

And the person invited to sit.

🪑🪑

Maybe that is what I love most about the chair.

Nobody has to disappear for somebody else to belong.

Nobody has to become smaller.

Nobody has to be dragged into it.

Nobody has to be chained to it.

Nobody has to earn it.

It simply says:

There is room for you here.

And yes, beloveds, sometimes the chair is lonely.

Sometimes I look over and quietly think:

I wish you were here.

There is nothing shameful about that.

I can sit fully in my own life and still desire company.

I can know my worth and still miss someone.

I can respect your freedom and still wish you had come.

Both can be true.

So I will keep my chair.

Not as an advertisement of loneliness.

As an expression of love.

As a declaration that after everything life can teach us about the risks of connection, I still believe people are worth making room for.

And if you are the one standing across the room looking at somebody’s chair today…

I see you, too.

Take your time.

You may have survived things nobody in that room knows about.

You may still be learning that not every chair comes with an invoice.

You do not have to explain every scar before deciding whether you want to sit.

And if you are the one looking at an empty chair today…

do not automatically decide its emptiness says something about your worth.

Keep living.

Keep loving.

Look around occasionally.

Someone may already be nearer than you realized.

And let the invitation remain an invitation.

The chair is still here.

There is room for you here.

Whosoeverwill…

loving me some you
Cassandra
#YourLifeMattersToMe