Loving you has become synonymous with breaking myself.
Ominously and so subtly present when I met you.
Veiled in the shadows of a love I thought would save me.
Easing myself into a devastating contract I didn't understand.
I signed myself up for eternal misery without even knowing.
Signed myself up for the pain of losing myself within you.
Darkness seeped in while your hands intertwined with mine.
Evading all detection before it was too late.
A love built up on lies and unrequited feelings.
Dead, the idea that love ever ends in love.
Sometimes the hardest truth to accept is that love, in all its beautiful complexity, can also be the source of our deepest wounds. When we love someone who cannot or will not love us back, we find ourselves in a peculiar kind of hell. One where hope and despair coexist in the same breath.
The metaphor of signing a "devastating contract" feels particularly apt. We enter into these emotional agreements with such optimism, believing that our capacity to love will somehow be enough. But love, real love, requires reciprocity. Without it, even the most passionate feelings become a form of exile we impose on ourselves.
The darkness that "seeps in" while hands are intertwined speaks to the cruel irony of physical closeness paired with emotional distance. It's possible to feel utterly alone while standing right next to someone, to feel the warmth of their skin while your heart grows colder by the day.
This piece was written during a period when I was learning that sometimes the most profound act of loving oneself is acknowledging when love has become destructive. Not all love stories end with "happily ever after". Some end with the harder lesson that loving someone means knowing when to let go, even when every fiber of your being wants to hold on.
The death of love isn't always dramatic. Sometimes it's a quiet ending, a gradual realization that what you thought was love had transformed into something else entirely. Obsession, neediness, or simply the memory of what love used to feel like.