I wasn’t entirely okay growing up. I had issues, more than I knew how to carry at that age, and there was so much I was quietly struggling with. There were times when my mind went to terrible places, when I thought about doing all sorts of horrible things just to make everything inside me stop hurting.

And then I grew up. None of my troubles really went away. If anything, they grew with me, becoming heavier and more complicated as life did. And sometimes, my mind still went to those same dark places. Except now, there was something that stopped me. Him. I just couldn’t do that to him. I couldn’t leave him behind in a world where I had done something like that. I couldn’t bear the thought of what it would do to him, because I knew he still needed me. And somehow, knowing that became reason enough to stay.

But somewhere along the way, life turned itself around. He stopped needing me, and I started needing him more. And every time I did, he was barely there.

Even then, I don’t know, I think some part of me always believed things would eventually be okay. That no matter how distant we became or how much changed between us, there were certain things we could never become to each other. There were certain ways he could never hurt me.

But to have felt the amount of pain I have felt because of him, through the things he has done and, sometimes, through all the things he chose not to do, has broken something in me I don’t quite know how to explain. Because this was the person who, without even knowing it, once gave me a reason to stay alive.

And now I find myself wondering why I fought so hard to stay at all.

We often ask, what is it that draws you to someone? Is it their looks, or is it their personality? It seems like such a simple question, yet I’ve never found it to have a simple answer.

You know what I think? Neither.

I think it’s how they make me feel. It’s not their looks, and it’s not even their personality on its own. It’s the way my heart feels in their presence. The quiet sense of safety, the excitement, the peace, the way they make the world soften around me. In the end, I don’t think we fall in love with faces or personalities. I think we fall in love with the feeling of who we become when we’re beside them.

Growing up is hard.

Whenever I think about what life has been like growing up, Wild World by Cat Stevens is the song that always finds its way back to me. I used to listen to it endlessly throughout my adolescent years, long before I understood why it made my chest ache. Looking back now, I think I was mourning something I couldn’t yet put into words.

The older I get, the more I realise I never loved that song because it was about someone leaving.

I loved it because I wished someone had loved me enough to say those words to me.

To tell me that it was a wild world. To tell me it would be hard to get by just upon a smile. To remind me to take care of myself because there would be people who wouldn’t. To look at me the way the song does, as someone still so young, still worth protecting.

Instead, I learnt all of those things on my own.

Growing up is hard because no one prepares you for the day your heart breaks at the hands of the people you loved most unconditionally. As children, we believe there will always be someone standing between us and the world. Someone who will make sure we get home safely, who will notice when we’re hurting, who will protect us simply because that’s what love does.

I always believed there would be at least one person who would keep my heart safe.

Life had other plans.

Every man I have ever loved has broken my heart in one way or another. But the heartbreak that stayed with me wasn’t the kind that arrived through romance. It came much earlier than that. It came from realising that the people I believed would always protect me were just people too. Fallible. Distracted. Human. And sometimes, painfully absent when I needed them most.

I think that’s why Wild World still makes me cry.

Because somewhere inside me there is still a little girl who wanted someone to see the world before she did. Someone to tell her to be careful. Someone to remind her that smiling wouldn’t always be enough. Someone to remember that she was, above everything else, just a child.

We spend so much of our lives believing we’re meant to outgrow that child. I don’t think we ever do. I think we simply learn to become the person we needed back then.

And maybe that’s all growing up really is.

I miss you, to the point of wanting to tell you every single time I do. But then I stop myself, because eventually I’d grow tired of saying it, and I’d worry you’d grow tired of hearing it.

The trouble is, I miss you is only three words. Three small words carrying a longing that never really leaves, lingering quietly until I can hold you again. They are hopelessly inadequate for everything they are meant to contain.

Because when I say I miss you, I don’t just mean that I wish you were here.

I mean I miss reaching for your hand without thinking. I miss your voice woven into the ordinary moments of my day. I miss the comfort of knowing that somewhere nearby, you exist within arm’s reach. I miss the way time slows down when I’m with you, the way the world becomes gentler, quieter, softer.

“I miss you” is simply the closest language has ever come to describing the unbearable distance between where I am and where I wish I could be.

And perhaps that’s why I never say it as often as I feel it. Because what lives inside those three words is far greater than they will ever be able to hold.