There was a time when I believed in love the way little girls believe in glittery futures and handwritten vows. I believed if you cared enough, tried hard enough and loved deeply enough, it would work. Love was supposed to be safe.
It was supposed to be gentle. Mutual.
Now? I’m not sure I believe in it the same way anymore.
I always believed in the magic of a romcom. Wishing that one day I would get my chance to dance in the rain. My chance to wear a yellow gown.
Now though? I’m not sure I believe in it the same way anymore. I’m not sure I believe that love is the fairytale in which all little girls dream about.
No one really talks about the moment your idea of love shatters. Not shatters dramatically, although sometimes it can. Just…splinters. Quietly. Lonely.
When you realize you can love someone with your entire heart, and they can still choose to hurt you. When you realize how easy it was for them to hurt you. It came easily for them.
That you can give someone loyalty, softness, patience, forgiveness and they can hand you confusion, inconsistency and pain in return. That you can share your life with someone, open your family to a stranger. And for what?
How are we able to love the wrong person so much? So deeply?
Although I may not believe in love anymore, I am grateful that I am not able to understand how someone could do such an act. How easy it is for people to leave and hurt as if another human isn’t on the other side.
That’s the part I can’t wrap my head around.
How can your chest physically ache for someone who has proven they don’t hold you the way you hold them? How can your mind know better but your heart still crave their voice, their laugh, their presence? Why does loving someone feel like breathing, automatic, even when they’re the one taking the air from you?
Maybe it’s because love isn’t logical.
We don’t fall for résumés. We fall for how someone makes us feel at 2 a.m., for potential, for memories, the version of them we met in the beginning, the one who texted “good morning” without fail, who made us feel chosen.
And when that version starts disappearing, we don’t want to believe it. We hold onto the fragments like they’re promises.
And sometimes the hardest truth is this:
You didn’t love “nothing.”
You loved who they were when they wanted to be good to you.
That doesn’t make you stupid. It makes you human.
But here’s what hurts the most: realizing someone can look at the same love you treasured and decide it’s not enough. Or that you’re not enough. Even when you gave them everything you had.
There’s something deeply disorienting about loving someone who can hurt you so easily. It makes you question your judgment, your standards, your worth. It makes you wonder if you imagined the whole thing.
If you were too much. Too emotional. Too forgiving.
Or maybe you were just loving.