Drafts By Dhark | writing blog

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Everyone is moving on.

Everyone seems to be moving on, while I’m stuck on this page, waiting for the words to come, waiting for something unknown. I wonder how people do it, how they exist, how they survive life as it is. It makes me think they are somehow stronger, and more suited for this world than I am.

I never really move past anything; it’s as if these feelings just accumulate, the emotions lingering year after year. Everything I’ve ever wanted to say still feels raw, and the melancholy from how people made me feel keeps replaying in my mind. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to forget or erase the pain. Even if I follow all the handbooks, I always end up back at the same place—the beginning.

I don’t think I’m the only one who feels things this deeply or torments myself with the past. But as I go through the book, hoping to reach the last page, the words intertwine at the center, bringing me back to where it all began.

Where did it start?

When I was seven, I dreamed that someday I would grow up and take care of everyone I loved. But the universe laughed at me, and the ties were broken. People died, others left, some moved away, and some even forgot about me. It seems they dared to move on and forget about the sweet, innocent child I once was.

When I was ten, my parents broke into a fight, and I could only stare in horror. This wasn’t love to me; it wasn’t what I saw in the movies. My parents loved each other in different, yet harmful, ways. I became the collateral damage, hit by the shards of glass before they struck the wall, and wounded by words not meant for me. My mother’s growing resentment turned into lashing out because I reminded her of my father—her mistake.

Falling in love for the first time, I thought life would never be the same. I dreamed of something different from what my parents had, riding the high of a naive little girl envisioning a heavenly romance. But then one day, they forgot and moved on—and I never did.

Perhaps it was feeling like a woman for the first time and opening my eyes to the world as it truly is. I realized that no matter how hard you try, you will never fit the image society wants. And I understood that everyone was watching, expecting me to grow into my mother’s daughter—someone I could never become.

It was recently when my best friend’s laughter sounded strange. I knew it was time to say goodbye to the person I loved and to accept that we were different now. She had learned to move on, and my being tethered to the past only hindered her growth. I loved her and wanted her to grow. She moved on, but I don’t think I have.

I don’t know how people do it, how they manage to carry this weight. Leaving it by the side of the road doesn’t seem like an option—it clings to me, it’s a part of me. Some days, I wake up thinking it’s gone, but it always returns, and I hate myself for it.

My mind is a museum of everything I ever held to heart, everything that ever made me feel something. I wonder who I would be without them. Maybe I hold them so close fearing I would be nothing…

But every morning, I try to forget. I remind myself that letting go equates to growth, and if I remain a coward all my life, these memories are just taking up space for the important things—for the things that actually matter.

I think it’s easier to be fully present in your life when you understand that every moment is fleeting, that everything is running away from you. All the people are just characters, and when the pages turn, some will disappear, the ink will fade, but the story will go on. Eventually, when the ending arrives, you’ll be on your own. If you’re lucky enough, someone might stick around long enough until the curtains call, but there must always be a time to say goodbye.

“You can’t spend your whole life being afraid of goodbyes. Live, please.”
A toast to loving alone

Love can be both the most honest mirror and the most deceptive illusion.

The last time I was in love-or at least I thought I was in love-it was with someone who couldn’t love me back. I remember spending the entirety of that time trying to figure him out, like he was pieces of a puzzle I needed to complete, as if solving him would somehow solve me too.

Did I finish? Yes.

Did I find what I was hoping for? No.

Once it was all complete and the game was over, I had to face the reality I’d been avoiding all along—the harsh truth I had been trying to caress those last months.

The truth was, he wasn’t the love of my life, and I had known it the very second he said how absurd my view of the world was. He wasn’t wrong, but I had always hoped the love of my life would accept being wrong with me, that he’d hold my hand and say, yeah, this is good enough of a dream. I wanted a partner in foolishness, someone who’d stand with me in the fragile beauty of belief. But this romance had soured into something else. It became less about me simply being and more about being realistic, and my reality was so fragile that he cracked everything wide open with a single touch of doubt.

And I let him.

I gave this person a way into my soul, and he just scuttled through the pathways, glanced around, and said there was nothing interesting enough there before walking out. Not that I wanted his validation, but even if I was searching for it, I had spent the better part of my life modeling these walls to cage myself, to hide from the world, to shield my own naivety. And then, the one time the walls were down, someone walked in, loitered, and walked right out.

I was alone in love.

The most beautiful tragedy of a writer… though living it felt nothing like poetry. It was terror—the terror of being broken, of realizing how tender the heart is forced to become when it’s touched and left undone. I didn’t think I would ever feel that hurt.

But I felt it. I felt all of it. And what destroyed me most was watching him move on with his life like nothing had happened. The sad part is, I couldn’t even blame him. I was blinded by what I had spent so many poetic minutes learning about, the mirage of mutuality. That fragile belief that the people around you, lovers or friends, are mirrors of your own sentiments.

I wanted him to feel what I felt, or at least I hoped he did, through all those months when we claimed to have something magical, something special. But I had to slowly unpack the truth, that he didn’t feel the same way, and that I simply didn’t want to see it. The signs were always there, in small ways, and I picked them up each time only to dismiss them, trying to make sense of the craziest thing.

And when he told me he didn’t feel the same, that he was unable to, I didn’t want to hear it.

In the end, when I spent months picking myself back together and promising that I would never give myself away so recklessly again, he was living as well as he could. And I was forgotten. I grieved someone I loved who was still alive… but the truth was I grieved someone I had imagined all along.

I was angry that he won and I lost. And maybe, in a way, he did win, because he knew all along what he wanted and was honest about it. And maybe I lost, because the puzzle pieces fit, but not into the picture I wanted them to. Yet I can’t lie: I saw when the pieces looked odd, out of place, and I just kept going.

The depth of love I poured into this person was more than he could ever handle, and so even after I stopped, he didn’t notice. He couldn’t. Because he didn’t understand it, he had never known it. And that’s okay.

I spent the time after that learning about the mirage of mutuality, how in love there is so much hoping, and how often we are blinded by that hope, betting against ourselves without even realizing it.

This isn’t a piece to discolor someone I loved. After all, I did love them, and there is something sacred in that truth. It is, instead, a piece to remind us not to lose ourselves in the loving, not to pour so much that we forget our own shape, not to project our love so fully onto others that we disappear in the process. It is also to remind us that love comes in different shades, and it is possible—sometimes inevitable—to hold misaligned perceptions of it.

It is beautiful to find a love that sees and hears you. And it is just as important to see and hear the people we love for who they truly are, without trying to bend or change them into something else.

The mirage of mutuality reminds us that love isn’t only about looking inside the mirror, but about daring to look through it, into the tender spaces where two reflections learn how to meet.
The Crow

The crow pecks at the window three times, and I toss and turn to the other side, hoping to open my eyes to find you knocking. But a tear slips out when I see, just the sky, just the birds — as if that alone is supposed to satisfy the ravenous hunger I carry for seeing you again.

I sit by the window, in the same room where we once spoke our sacred language, how we first understood each other. Your hands in my hair, your laughter resting on my neck, sinking your teeth into all that was me, like there was more behind the flesh.

Now my fingers tremble at the memories, and I stare at the phone, hoping you might call—thinking, at the very least, of another way to say goodbye. Maybe I can just keep saying it, over and over again, just to hear that shallow sound of your breath, the timbre of your voice as you hope to see me again… over and over again.

But my fingers hover over the cords of the telephone line. I said goodbye in every language left. I learned all the ways to keep running back, until there was nothing left. This malady inside me is ferociously drifting, from the freckles to the fingers, to the nerves… and all I can remember is wanting you. All I can remember is being with you.

I look away.

The phone line breaks.

I see your smile against the window glass. I was hoping the phone would ring, but I was ever the only one holding the line, ever the only one running back, rewriting my name into the chapters when they came to an end. Ever the one… trying.

But you… you live so easily.

The characters come and go. You had once said esoterically, and I was envious of your acceptance that things just come and go. I imagined you would resist… that we wouldn’t go.

But you scribbled away anyway — new characters, things come and go: the wind, the seasons, life… me…

But I never let you leave me… Not at least in a way I could finger. You stayed, yet you were gone. Hiding behind the walls, hiding through the memories like you weren’t really gone, but you were here. Just in memory, in nostalgia, in longing, and in all the ways I could still reach you.

Sooner, I wished I could find a new place to call home. Repaint the walls, keep on writing, but everything stopped once you walked out the door. I was living, in a sense, through the only thing I had left, your memory.

The crow pecks the window, and I hope it comes with a letter—a severance for all the pain you left behind. It pecks three times and stares into me.

‘Wake up!’ It cries and flits away.
My Friend, Grief, the Shapeshifter

I envy grief’s fluidity, her flexibility to stretch beyond her given time. Without notice, without apology. I have only ever been so rigid. I never learnt how to bend and arc above the frame.

I envy how she takes up space, implores to be as loud as she can. I have only ever been silent. I learnt how to stay quiet, how to hide. Now I’m forced to deal with her cries. She fills up the whole room, squeezes me into the corner of my own house.

I envy her persistence, how she goes on and on relentlessly. I wonder what could have become of my dreams had I been that determined.

I envy her entitlement, how she chooses to be inconsiderate of the moment. She scuttles behind me as I miss the bus, and she runs after me in the rain. She stands by the window to block the sun, and she draws the curtains to keep out the moon. She stands loudly between me and my mother, and she sits silently between me and my friends.

I envy her selfishness. I have never known how to be the self. So, she teaches me that everything is about her, even when there is no reason for her to be there.

I envy her grip on the past, as I have never been able to hold onto anything with my flimsy hands. But she tells me that she never learnt how to let go.

I envy her consistency. Through every chapter she sticks around, through every character she wades through. She lingers, as if waiting for the end, as if she knows that she is but love’s souvenir. She will always be there, even if in shadow.
I don’t know you anymore

My heart’s insistence for closure is disgraceful desperation, just a veil for my hunger. The thirst of seeing you, even for a second more, leads me down this path of despair, along the roads you once trod, as though I might find pieces of yourself you forgot to leave behind. It is hope that drags me here, across the pebbles, with dirt beneath my fingers as I dig into the soil where I buried the lost memories of us, back when I tried to forget before I was ready.

I hope to find something—anything—you left behind. Your flesh decaying, as if my tears might ease the rot, soften it, stop it. As if a kiss could wake you, and lay you back in these withered arms.

I knew little of grief before you, she only waved at me by the door. Until that day you left, and she came knocking adamantly with a sour smile, claiming she was a souvenir and the atonement for losing oneself in the chains of devotion. Love, they call it, but weakness, I now know. She walked in that day and never found a way out. She scraped her way to the window, savaged the doors, dug through the walls, but still she lay limply on the floor. She wanted to leave that morning, with the sun’s freckles through the blinds. She peached her ruin, that she had overstayed her welcome—yet I adjured her to stay, in fear that I couldn’t be alone.

Sinking my head underwater, as the ripples carry the essence of what you left. A memory in wisp, like the wind, like you hovering by, a soft whisper of your voice. I plunge my hair into the stream of lies, of someone I knew before. You before me, me before you. And I don’t know what to make of it, who played the fool, or who swindled the wise. I close my eyes only to the lapping memory, a sound of someone I made all up, a caricature to douse my pain. Sculpted through the script you played so well, that I almost fell into my own lie.

A stream of lies, and here I lay—

from your ocean of pride, as more streams you create.

So, like me, they can wash their curls with longing, and the inadequacy of failing to swallow the ocean whole.
The Lighthouse Keeper’s Paradox

There’s someone who lives alone in a tower by the sea. Every night, they stay awake, quietly tending the light so ships don’t crash in the dark.

But while they’re guiding others, no one ever comes to check if they’re okay. Everyone sees the light, not the person behind it. And slowly, they start to feel invisible. Needed, yes. But never really seen.

That’s the Lighthouse Keeper’s Paradox.

It’s the feeling of being the strong one. The one people go to when they’re lost. The one who listens, who helps, who gives. And it feels good to be that person. But over time, it also starts to feel lonely. Because while you’re showing up for everyone else, you don’t know if anyone would show up for you.

The Lighthouse Keeper’s Paradox is the tragedy of becoming a light for others while quietly drowning in your own darkness. It’s the agony of being the guide, the healer, the anchor, helping others find their way to shore, even as you remain lost at sea.

It’s an emotional and existential contradiction: to offer clarity while feeling clouded yourself. To lead others home while carrying a homesickness you can’t name. To illuminate paths you’ll never walk, watching others reach destinations that feel impossibly out of reach for you.

At its heart, this paradox is not just about self-sacrifice, it’s about the unseen cost of holding space for others when no one holds space for you.

Psychological Layer

Psychologically, this paradox can stem from early conditioning, being the child who learned that love was earned through being useful. It often begins in childhood, with someone who learned that love comes through being useful. They were the peacemaker, the fixer, the one who held others together. And somewhere along the way, they started believing their worth lived in what they gave, not who they were.

So, they grew into the helper, the steady one, the light. But beneath it all is fear, that if they stop guiding others, they’ll be forgotten. That asking for help makes them weak.

And so, they stay in the tower, tending the light, watching the waves… but never asking anyone to come up the stairs.

Emotional Layer

Emotionally, this person might feel deeply unfulfilled and yet simultaneously purposeful. There’s pride in being dependable, in being the one others turn to. But there’s also a silent loneliness. They might even start to feel invisible. People thank the light but rarely check on the one who keeps it alive.

There’s an inner dissonance: “I matter because I’m helpful,” slowly becomes “I only matter if I’m helping.” And this creates emotional self-abandonment. They silence their needs. They downplay their desires. They get used to not being asked about their inner world,  and eventually, they stop asking themselves.

Spiritual Layer

Spiritually, the Lighthouse Keeper may feel like they’re fulfilling a higher calling, and in many ways, they are. There’s something sacred in being the one who keeps others from drowning. But the danger lies in mistaking sacrifice for enlightenment.

There’s a false spiritual belief that to be pure, to be good, to be worthy of love, one must give endlessly and expect nothing. But this is often a subtle form of spiritual bypassing, avoiding the hard work of self-confrontation by hiding behind service.

The paradox is that true light doesn’t come from constant sacrifice, it comes from balance. From allowing yourself to be loved, to receive, to rest, to be human, even as you hold space for others.

The  path to healing begins by recognizing that you are also allowed to come down from the tower. That light is not just something you give, but something you deserve to receive.

Healing means learning that love isn’t transactional.

That you don’t have to be useful to be kept. That your presence matters, even when you’re the one needing a hand.

Sometimes the bravest thing the lighthouse keeper can do… is turn the light inward. And wait for someone to come home to them
The last meeting theory

When goodbye is truly goodbye

There’s a moment in life when we see someone for the last time. We may not recognize it then, but looking back, we realize—it was the end. And strangely enough, we never see them again. The Last Meeting Theory suggests that when a chapter in your life closes, it stays closed. That final encounter, that last glance, that goodbye you didn’t even know was a goodbye—it seals the door shut. The universe ensures you do not return to what no longer is part of your story.

1. The Psychological Aspect implies that The Brain Seeks Closure

Maybe our minds crave completion/closure. The unfinished emotions create internal dissonance, so when that final meeting occurs, we categorize it—this is done. And once we accept something as over, we unconsciously stop searching for it. Once you truly let go of someone, they seem to disappear from your world. The same places, the same streets—yet somehow, you never cross paths again. It’s not magic; it’s your brain rewriting the map.

2. The Universe as a Gatekeeper of Relationships

Maybe when someone’s role in your life is complete, the universe steps in to ensure no unnecessary reruns. Lessons learned, doors locked. Maybe that’s why: That person you swore you’d run into again never reappears. The friend who faded away remains a ghost of the past. That fleeting stranger who felt significant was never meant to stay. Some may call it fate. Others call it protection. Either way, when something is meant to stay in the past, the universe makes sure it does.

3. The Role of Perception and Choice

Maybe it’s just us. We drift, we change, we step into new versions of ourselves that no longer align with the past. You stop frequenting places you once did, unknowingly avoiding them. Your energy shifts, and so do the people you attract. You see the final meeting as final, making it so.

The Last Meeting Theory might be comforting as / It reminds us to be present, to hold moments closer / It reassures us that endings bring new beginnings / It spares us from reopening wounds that should stay healed.

The Last Meeting Theory might be terrifying as / It means you rarely get to plan a true goodbye / It makes you wonder how many “last times” you never realized / It forces you to accept the impermanence of everything.

So, Cherish the people in front of you. Because sometimes, without warning, it’s the last time you’ll ever see them.
A Portrait of Grief

In all honesty, I don’t know how to carry on, not without you.

I stumbled on the road, mid-journey, just to look back. And I spent two whole summers believing I would forget you. The roses I left by your grave withered and died long ago, but somewhere in my heart, I kept them alive.

We laughed and danced at the future, and you never let me imagine that there could ever be one without you. We framed the pictures with our smiles and hung them all over the walls. Now I pick them up, one by one, to turn them over… to color over them in gray.

You never imagine a life without — you hover over the moment as if it were forever, and how deceitful forever can be. You never imagine a day without — you let each second pass like it owes you more time. We let the moment slip away, and some of us end up standing at the edge of the cliff, too scared to leap into the water. And when we finally look up, they’re no longer by our side. They’re already swimming away. If we’re lucky, they wait — they wave us over — but still, we stand there, too afraid to jump.

I know when I should have jumped. I should have reached for you, should have lifted you as you drowned. But I stood there, fascinated, watching — thinking that by staying on the sidelines, the damage would somehow be less.

Then I woke up one day, and you were gone. So was the past, and so was our future. I had to color over the frames, I had to learn how to rewrite all the songs. The melody grew less rhythmic, the bees stopped humming by the petals. I scraped through every piece of memory just to look back without the soreness, without the thought that I should have done better, that I should have been better for you… for me.

God, you wanted me to reach for the stars. You believed in me when I couldn’t. You picked up the paintbrush when all I had was the empty canvas of my life.

The strength I had to color wasn’t because I had a dream, but because I dreamt of you. I coated the yellows with your memory, mixed the reds with your desires, blended the blacks with your sorrows, and created the purples from your hopes. A canvas of my life, painted with the hues of your ardor.

Now, I stare at the painting, feeling as though I stole something from you.

I should have taken more pictures. I should have let the sound of your laughter linger, as it seems that I will forever be haunted by your memory. But you are gone, and your perfume is still pressed on the silk pillows, and your shadows still dance along the walls.

I made the tombstone with your favorite color, repainting it after every storm. I still haven’t found the courage to leave this place. I circle petals around where you lay, and I dream—our dream, a future with you in it.

By the time the dream fades, I can no longer move my body from this field I lie. Anything else feels like a nightmare, so I sing and loiter by our memories. I imagine you holding out your hand to me, but every time I get near, you disappear. I have dedicated myself to this daunting, futile task of finding you—somewhere in the ether, a place just out of reach.

I still can’t imagine a life without you in it.

Forever, our souls lie in spirit, and I will grieve and remember until I learn how to forget….
Something happened in between

I looked at myself in the mirror, the darkness making my eyes foggy. A strand of my hair—too thin, withering away. I tried to smile, but it slipped off my lips, too rehearsed, too practiced, as if I looked better without it. The emptiness stood out, a reflection of me. It stood boldly, yet unforeseen.

All I knew was that time was passing, and I had lost so many versions of myself in between. I had lost the little girl with hopeful eyes. I had lost the teenager with a soulless gaze. I had lost the woman who once looked at the world with careless wonder.

I had lost myself…

There was a time—a time in the past when I felt something.

When my eyes didn’t clog at the thought of my future.

When my heart didn’t burn at the thought of the past.

There was a time when control sat in the palm of my hands, and I used it to steer the wheel of my life. The windows down, the midday sun shining through the sunroof, a melancholic song from a time I didn’t know before. One hand outside the window, trying to get a feel of the breeze as I drove down the road, my destination set in stone.

Yet it seemed the car moved on its own. Even with my hands off the wheel, it kept going.

I thought I had control. I thought I knew where I was going.

But did I, really?

Or was it all just an illusion?

I can’t tell when I lost control, when the car swerved in the wrong direction. But I had started to see the clouds turning grey, a mist over the windows, faces I can’t recall.

I saw myself sitting on an old porch by the road, sinking to the floor beneath the heavy coat of the past. A cup of tea so bitter the taste crawled up my arm. The wheels spun out of control, yet the car moved slow.

The tears came with the soft simmering rains, and I felt my blood turn cold. Miles and years blurred together, my mind confabulating over what was. I wasn’t sure about a lot of things then.

But one thing I knew without a doubt—

This wasn’t the road I had in mind.

There was blood running down my lips, and I wished I could tell him that I felt the pain. But for some reason, I had let it fold in—so much so that it barely felt like pain anymore. It felt like nothing.

I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to live. But, God, was I tired of surviving— of living in between.

Melancholy wraps itself around me now. It pulls down the sleeves of my shirt, creeps into the cornices of my mind.

I remember everything, yet I remember nothing at all.

I remember everyone, yet I barely remember you.

Something happened in between— the moment I realized I was staring at a stranger.

Was I meant to live stuck in the idea of who I thought I would become, or was I meant to move on with who I had become?

Something happened in between— the grass went pale. The birds stopped singing.

Something happened in between.

I don’t know, but I know.
Oh Nostalgia,

Oh, Nostalgia,

My dear old friend.

There you are, standing down the grocery store aisle, your eyes hovering by the cherries—like they could make me crawl back into your arms. Your sunken eyes urge me to go back, to run back into the illusion of a past that never was. Back to the silhouettes of ghosts dawdling along the walls of that old house, to the echoes of voices I can barely remember.

Nostalgia, I know why you’re here. But I am walking away. One step back, a sour smile, biting down the urge to let you move back home.

Nostalgia, I painted the walls red, coated them with glitter to fill color in all the places that felt drab. I dried my tears; drew the curtains you liked—untouched. Lit the candles you liked—unmarred. The light came in, sulking by the door before falling on everything in its path.

It touched me.

It’s safer from a distance, I think—this colossal, complicated matrimony of ours. Separate beds, different roofs, a hallway without your shadows.

You ruined me, Nostalgia…

You were coloring over the greys, covering the dark patches and blemishes as if daring them to disappear. Ignoring the pain, clinging to the glimpses—the brittle moments too minute to account for all that happened. You got too close, watched me drown, and yet you did nothing to save me. You poked a knife through my chest and let the blood pour out, in its unrelenting, sheer force.

You wanted me dead, didn’t you?

Perhaps I let you too close. I’ve never been the best at making the right decisions. Maybe I let you too close—so close that you forgot the pain. So close that you only recalled the flashes of happiness. The smiles during the storm. The breaks in between.

The beauty without its terror.

Nostalgia, I think you forgot about me…

I washed the mugs twice each day, wiping off the touches, erasing the poignant memories. I threw out everything that would make me remember—and there you were, in the clutter, standing down the road as you waved goodbye. Your tears, unnoticeable in the rain as you grieved what was.

I didn’t want to, but I had to.

Your feet, bare on the lone road, nowhere to go. Your fragments burning with the illusions you had created.

The skies turned grey, and the hallways were empty once again. The ghosts lingered only for a few days before moving down the block—to create fantasies that will haunt another lover.

At first, I thought you came to remind me that I had loved. Only, I came to love you more than I had ever loved before. Only, you went too far—to show me what I had lost, and in that loss, I lost myself.

You pick the cherry, hoping to remind me of the taste. A hollow smile crawls up to my lips, but then it’s gone. Your shoulders sag as I clear out my basket—lemons and kale.

I won’t carry you with me Nostalgia.

I’m sorry, but I have to leave you here.
How did I feel?

How did I feel?

Please ask me once more…

I am not sure how I was supposed to feel. The lines between what we had and what was lost were so blurred—because how was I to feel? To pour out into love and for one to hand it away like it mattered nothing to them.

How do people do this again? How do people hope?

Love, to me, is hope, and at one end of hope, we have despair, recoiling the strings of fate. And if only I had accepted it, I would undo it. I would walk past them. I would have closed my eyes. I would have hidden away. Why can’t we just fall in love without thinking of the agony that it might end?

Sorry… what I meant to say is, I don’t know how I felt.

There was a part of me that felt relieved about being right—that it would eventually happen. And then there was something else, something I had never truly felt before. It was saddening, sickening, maddening. I thought I was losing my mind. I felt like my heart had been ripped open, and oh, fuck… how I wanted to die.

If you ask me now, I think it’s better to be adored than to be the adorer. I think the adored holds so much power. And humans, right… who doesn’t like power?

I know what you’re asking me, but I can’t answer. I can’t…

Look, I would rewind time. I would go back to that moment when I knew and turned away. I would have told them something else—like maybe the food is getting cold—not to get sentimental and all that…

Loving someone is torture, especially when you reserve that feeling for everyone else but yourself… How much more was I willing to lose just to be held? Held in those cold arms that would forget me in the light of day.

I felt… I felt… a soul-crashing pain I didn’t think I would survive. I felt betrayed, hurt, deceived. I felt fooled… I felt crazy. That’s what it does to you.

I felt like I wanted to hate… but love had poured so many gallons inside me—festering, burning, and refusing to turn into hate. I wanted it to be easy, from love to hate, but it was just from love to agony. And there was no hate… no hate. No hate in between, no hate down that road. I wanted to hate, but I felt…

I felt love.