People ask why I stayed. Why I went back. Why I loved someone who hurt me.
Because he saw me.
My whole life I’ve been too much—too intense, too deep, too all-consuming. People either back away like I’m dangerous, or they try to smother it down into something that won’t pull them under. They want my love in “reasonable” amounts. They want me manageable.
He didn’t run. He didn’t flinch. He met my flood and asked for the whole ocean.
When I poured myself into him, he didn’t recoil—he leaned in. Where everyone else told me to slow down, he pulled me closer and said: more. For the first time, my intensity didn’t feel like something I had to apologize for. It felt wanted.
And he didn’t just want my good days.
When I cried, he hunted me down. Found whatever room I’d hidden myself in and wrapped his arms around me until the shaking stopped. When he missed me—even if I was only in the next room—he’d come find me. Pull me into him. Like being apart for even a few minutes was unbearable. He never got sick of me being around.
We had our own language—jokes no one else would ever understand, little moments that only worked because it was us. Now I have no one to speak it with. And some part of me has gone silent forever.
Do you know how rare that is? To be wanted like that? To have someone match your depth instead of drowning in it?
Do you know what that does to someone who’s spent their whole life feeling invisible?
It makes you feel chosen.
So when people say, “you’ll love again,” they don’t understand what I’m mourning.
I’m not mourning him.
I’m mourning the only time I’ve ever felt completely known. And I’m terrified that seen and safe don’t exist in the same person—that being fully understood is just handing someone the exact map of how to hurt you.
I didn’t stay because I was weak. I didn’t stay because I didn’t know better.
I stayed because I had been starving my entire life, and he was the first person who ever actually fed me.
Even if the food was poison.