It means nothing to me if you fall in love with me at your lowest when you treated me like shit at your best.
How can I forgive you when my scars haven’t forgiven you?
I like to think I’m healing. Despite the missteps and moments of doubt, I know I’m on the right path. I’m self-aware. I know where it hurts, and most of the time, I even understand why it hurts.
But healing brought something I didn’t expect—the loss of feeling. The absence of blind love. The instinct to emotionally detach from anyone who doesn’t serve me. And that’s not who I used to be.
I used to be the “love me, choose me” girl. But more often than not, I was too okay with not being chosen. Too understanding. I handed out free passes to people who didn’t deserve them, letting them toy with my heart without consequence. I used to feel everything so deeply. And now, I feel almost nothing.
I’m not in love anymore. Not even with the idea of it. And honestly, I don’t know if I even remember what love is supposed to feel like.
This relationship taught me some of the best and worst things about myself. That’s what relationships do—even when they don’t work, they reveal. In the beginning, it showed me how unconditional my love could be. How forgiving, nurturing, caring, and trusting I was capable of being.
Until I wasn’t.
Until I finally saw things for what they were. And when that clarity came, it was too late, but somehow still on time. Because then I remembered something I’ve always known about myself—how cold I can be. How quickly I can shut down. And when I do, you’d question whether I ever loved you at all.
Still, I want to be in love again. But this time, with someone who treats me right. I want to feel excited again. I want butterflies. I want to feel silly and childish and consumed by that wild, intoxicating infatuation. Because the absence of all of that? It’s starting to feel like emptiness.
I feel so deeply uninterested. Nothing excites me. Nothing feels new. There’s nothing I’m looking forward to.
Sometimes, I feel most alive when I think about certain paths I’ve walked before. But there’s no real desire to retrace those steps either.
It’s been like this for a while. I try to put myself out there, but there’s a quiet resistance inside me—a kind of empathy that holds me back. I try to reason with myself, and I know it’s okay to take time, but still… I just can’t do it yet.
My therapist asked me if I feel like I lose a part of myself with every relationship that ends. Like something inside me dies with them. I had never really thought of it that way. But I told him this: every breakup leaves behind a different version of me. Some made me stronger, some left me feeling less.
The only connection I’ve felt recently was the one that promised something permanent the moment I replied. And because it happened so easily, I thought it wouldn’t be that hard to feel that way again. But it is. Nothing sparks. Nothing glows. Nothing ignites anything inside me.
Maybe that’s why I keep looking back. The most thrilling parts of my life were often the moments I wasn’t supposed to be living. The ones laced with risk, spontaneity, and just enough secrecy to make them unforgettable.
I remember giving them a time and waiting. Wondering if they’d show up. Wondering if they’d be early, late, or not come at all. One always came right on time. The other was barely there and always late.
Maybe they’ll always be my favorite mistakes. Both of them made me feel things I hadn’t felt in a long time. But only one gave it back to me fully. With him, it was like we felt the same things at the same time, and there was no running from it.
June 2019. A time I’d relive in a heartbeat. It looks even more perfect from this distance, but I know it wasn’t. It was always wrong. And maybe I should feel ashamed, but I wasn’t. Because I didn’t demand anything. I didn’t push. I just went with the flow. And I was okay with that—because for the first time in a long time, someone made me feel alive again.
I’ve been feeling so drained lately. Days blur into hours, and I lie in bed watching the world unfold through a screen, completely disconnected from everything outside my door.
I know it’s depression. It’s mostly functional, but these days, it’s not. It’s familiar—it never really leaves. I’ve lived with it long enough. But something about this season feels different. I feel stuck, distant, indifferent. I don’t know why, and honestly, I don’t have the energy to figure it out. I just keep telling myself it’ll pass. One day I’ll wake up, go for a run, return to the gym, eat better, and slowly start feeling like myself again.
Until then, I’m learning to be gentle with myself. To forgive the unrealistic expectations I keep setting, even when my mind isn’t in the right space. To stop being so hard on myself for needing rest. It may look like laziness or a lack of purpose, but this might be the most I can manage right now. And that has to be enough.
Maybe I’m processing more than I realize. Maybe this quiet is the pause I didn’t know I needed after months of pushing through. Whatever it is, I’m choosing patience. I’m choosing softness. I’m choosing to love myself through it all.
Because if I don’t, who will?
Love, Fear.
There’s a version of love we don’t talk about enough — the kind that lives on after trust has been broken, the kind that stays even when the heart has been bruised more than once.
It’s a strange, conflicted place to be — still here, but not really whole. Wanting to try, but afraid of what trying might cost.
Lately, I’ve been noticing how easily I get angry. Not over the big things — but over the small, almost invisible ones. Things that maybe wouldn’t matter if my heart didn’t already feel like it was standing on cracked ground.
The truth is, my anger isn’t really about him.
It’s about fear.
Fear that the ground will crack again.
Fear that if I trust, I’ll end up back in the same lonely place, wondering why I stayed.
Fear that trying again means betraying myself, that forgiveness might cost me more than it heals.
Fear that maybe love isn’t enough if trust can’t find its way back.
No one tells you how heavy it is to carry love and fear at the same time.
No one teaches you how to speak gently when you’re scared.
No one prepares you for how easy it is to hurt someone when you’re only trying to protect yourself.
I Carried It Alone
Even if they could pretend it never happened, I couldn’t. Even if she told me I shouldn’t tell people about it, I couldn’t help but speak. Because the one person who couldn’t pretend it didn’t happen was me. It happened to me. And I was dying for someone to see it. I was aching to be seen—held, embraced, even as my wounds were still bleeding. It had cut me in places I hadn’t even realized at the time. I was unaware that it would ache silently forever—for the part of me that died.
I was too young to know any better. So when I told people, maybe they didn’t see it as something that happened to me. Maybe they just saw what I had become after. And because that’s how they saw me, that’s how I began to see myself too: utterly ruined.
I shouldn’t be thinking about it now, but it’s Monday again—my weekly therapy day. Last session ended with us unpacking that trauma, and I’ve been left to reflect. To remember how it felt. To remember how it happened.
But all week, I didn’t really drown in it. I don’t think I even tried. I’m wired to push it down. And I do it so well that I start to ask myself—was what happened really that big of a deal?
These are the memories I never sat down to recall, just kept running from. So much so that I barely remember half of it. I just remember myself, standing there—dead inside. On the outside, I barely moved. I swear I had no movement of my own. Everything was done to me. I was fifteen. My life hadn’t even properly started, and I already felt ruined.
It felt like the ultimate betrayal. Like I had betrayed myself. Like I had failed to protect me. I felt responsible. I had been manipulated and isolated so completely, I didn’t even believe there were people who could—or would—save me. So I quietly endured it. Months of abuse, manipulation, and hostility.
That one thing that happened became the cornerstone of everything else that followed. It shaped me. It shaped my relationships. It shaped the relationship I had with myself. The trauma alone was unbearable—but the second-hand trauma, the one from never being allowed to process or speak of it properly, was even heavier. My behaviors became patterns—trauma responses I didn’t even recognize until now, seventeen years later. Longer than I had been alive when it happened to me. The trauma is older than I was when it first occurred.
I was forced to bury the pain so deep that I began questioning it. Did it really hurt? That planted the seeds of a lifelong struggle. Not having anyone validate my trauma meant I started doubting everything. While others moved on, I stayed frozen. Broken. And this became the beginning of me questioning reality itself. Was what I felt real, or was it all in my head?
My thoughts split into two ends, always pulling at each other. I could never quite be sure of anything. And that uncertainty—of myself, of my own mind—felt like a curse. My sense of self failed to exist.
I was never taught to love myself. So I never really valued me. I barely even saw me. I didn’t care about how I felt. I was conditioned to overlook myself, and others followed suit. I was invisible. And for the rest of my teenage years and into my twenties, I only saw myself through the eyes of others. If they didn’t see me, I didn’t exist. Their validation was my only evidence of being alive.
Surely, there couldn’t have been a worse way to live through those years—but that’s how they were.
And maybe—just maybe—the reason I give so many chances to people who hurt me is because I had to forgive my perpetrators. And if I can live with that, how hard can the rest be?
The Stillness That Waited for Me
I dreaded coming home—to the stillness, the emptiness.
Nothing had really changed, except that he wasn’t there anymore.
Work was its usual chaos. Deadlines. Noise. Stress. And yet, somehow, the world felt unbearably still. As if everything had paused the moment he left. With the idea of him gone, everything felt dull. Pointless. He was a small sense of purpose in my life—and even if it was small, it was still something. Maybe I did love him. Maybe that’s what this is.
I’ve asked myself this question a hundred times: is it love? Or just the anxious, insecure part of me panicking at the loss of connection? Is this grief or just withdrawal from the only kind of closeness I’ve ever known?
I walked for hours today. My feet ache. I took the longest route home, just to avoid the moment I’d have to face this version of reality—the one where he’s no longer part of it.
I bought flowers on the way. I don’t know why. I guess I wanted to feel like something beautiful still existed. But now, as they wilt in the vase, I can barely look at them. Their fading feels like mine. A quiet, painful reminder of everything slipping.
Don’t get me wrong—it’s not just about a boy. Not entirely. Not even mostly.
It’s about the weight I carry. The kind of pain that existed long before he ever did.
He didn’t fix me. He didn’t save me. But when he was around, I didn’t feel so alone in my brokenness. I didn’t feel like I was rotting in silence.
And now, that changes.
Is It Too Late to Dream of Love?
Is there an age where it becomes embarrassing to still want the love you dream of? A quiet shame that creeps in when you find yourself hoping for a fairytale ending—like if it hasn’t happened by now, maybe it never will?
I don’t think it’s about a lack of options. It’s not that there aren’t enough men in the world. But there’s definitely a scarcity of men with the right intentions. And I’ll be the first to admit—sometimes I don’t even let the kind ones in. The ones who are gentle, who show up, who don’t play games. My heart rarely ignites for them. And maybe that’s on me.
This is the paradox I live in.
I fall for those who unsettle me. Who throw my nervous system into chaos. Because that’s what love looked like to me growing up. Unpredictable. Unstable. It’s what I knew. It’s what felt familiar. So now, when someone comes along and treats me with genuine care, I often feel… nothing. No spark. No pull. Just a strange hollowness.
Because healthy love feels boring. Steady feels boring. And god, how I envy the people who flourish in peace—those who are at ease when things get calm, when love slows down, becomes routine, becomes real.
The love I’ve known is messy and loud and intoxicating. At first, it feels like a high. The uncertainty, the chase, the edge—it keeps me awake. It keeps me wanting. It feels like the only kind of love that exists for me.
And I hate that.
Living with a personality disorder doesn’t define me, but it shapes me. It shapes how I love, how I attach, how I respond to safety and chaos. I’m not trying to make it my identity, but I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t left fingerprints all over my life.
At some point, you have to be honest with yourself. Maybe I’m just wired differently. Maybe what’s supposed to feel like home never quite will. Maybe my kind of love exists outside the lines of normal—and that’s something I’m still learning to sit with.
Digital Fatigue
Don’t you ever wish we could disconnect? Not from the people we love, but from the constant pressure to always be available, always reachable, always “on.”
We live in a time where everything is just a tap away. The world has advanced so quickly. Technology has brought us ease, speed, and connection like never before. But along with that, it has quietly added a new kind of weight to our lives. A subtle but persistent expectation to stay online, to reply immediately, to be present at all times. It’s exhausting, even if we don’t always realize it.
Sure, we can silence our phones. We can decide to reply to messages later. We can take breaks when we feel overwhelmed. But even then, it doesn’t feel like a true pause. The pressure lingers in the background, quietly whispering that you’re falling behind, that someone is waiting on you. It has become so embedded into our routines that separating from it feels nearly impossible.
Sometimes I miss the simplicity of landlines. The feeling of calling someone and not reaching them. The sweetness of missing someone you couldn’t talk to instantly. There was something tender about the waiting, the anticipation, the distance. Now, we take the instant nature of communication for granted. Messages fly back and forth all day, yet the feeling behind them often feels diluted.
Lately, I’ve been craving slower, more intentional moments. I want to say, “Let’s meet Wednesday at eight,” and know we’ll both be there without confirming a dozen times. I want to go back to making plans and trusting them. I want to lessen the quantity of interactions and bring back the quality. Not every moment needs to be filled with updates or check-ins. Sometimes, it’s okay to just be, and then show up when it matters.
I miss the depth that came from space and silence. From time apart. From having stories to tell because you hadn’t spoken in a while. These days, it feels like we’re constantly talking, but rarely saying anything meaningful.
I don’t know if anyone else feels this way. Maybe it’s nostalgia. Maybe it’s burnout. Maybe it’s just me wanting to experience connection on my own terms again — more quality, less quantity. Something slower. One that doesn’t depend on constant notifications, but instead is built on trust, presence, and care.
Or is that too 90s of me?
Trusting with Tremors
They say without trust, a relationship is as good as dead — and I fully agree.
But what about when you still believe in the good in someone?
What about when you see the change, however small?
What about when their effort doesn’t erase the past, but makes you pause and wonder — maybe… maybe this could still work?
So what do we do with broken trust?
I’ve tried to heal from it. I’ve also tried to survive it. I’ve gone through his phone more times than I want to admit. Found nothing I loved — but everything that made just enough sense to leave me confused instead of angry. That strange in-between space. Not guilty, not innocent. Just human.
Still, if you decide to stay with someone who once broke your trust, it’s a risk and a burden you willingly sign up for.
And once you sign up for it, maybe it’s time to stop looking over your shoulder — and start looking for solutions.
I used to check his location.
Not because I didn’t know where he was — but because I needed proof that he still chose me, even when I wasn’t watching. It became a crutch. A tiny screen I used to soothe a massive ache.
But I don’t want to live like that anymore.
I want to learn to trust.
Not blindly — but bravely.
Not all at once — but one gentle, terrifying step at a time.
Rebuilding trust isn’t romantic.
It’s slow, repetitive, and exhausting.
It requires presence, consistency, and repair.
But I believe it’s possible — just like love after loss, or laughter after grief.
It might take time. It might take him showing up in the moments I used to panic.
It might take new memories that are wonderful enough to outnumber the haunting ones.
But I want to try.
So this is my new mission:
To rebuild trust.
To let him be.
To free myself from the weight of suspicion.
Not for him. For me.
I want to love without surveillance.
I want to breathe without fear.
I want to trust again — even if my hands are still shaking.
She Was Sea 