In matters of love, I have always been uneasy. Not for lack of feeling, but because feeling, when it comes to me, arrives not as calm but as a trembling — a need to confirm, to anchor, to touch the certainty of another heart and find it unmoved. When I cannot, I begin to dig, quietly at first, then with urgency, as if somewhere beneath their silences lies the proof I need: that I am being deceived, that the love I feel is not returned in kind. Not because I wish to accuse, but because I cannot bear the weight of loving without knowing, and I need, if nothing else, a reason to walk away without guilt. But once you start to look for something with intent, everything begins to look like it.
By the time I notice what I have become, it is already too late. The person who once laughed without caution, who could sulk or tease without pretense, who asked for love as naturally as breathing, has gone quiet. In her place, someone speaks less. Someone who rewrites her messages again and again. Someone who studies the gaps between replies, imagines whole betrayals in the silence of an afternoon, and questions, always questions, whether it is she who is too much, or they who are simply absent.
I do not renounce this version of myself. She is born of pain, and I understand her well. But I cannot love her. Not because she is weak, but because she is watchful, calculating, turned inward. Her love is still real, but it no longer flows. It measures. It waits. It fears.
We don’t leave because we stop loving the other. We leave because we stop recognizing something in ourselves worth staying for.
I suppose when it comes to a relationship, what matters most is whether you can still live with the person you are within it.
