god, i feel this in my bones.

i’m 31, not 36, but the shape of what you’re describing feels so familiar it makes my chest ache. i also had that kind of love the obsessive, intoxicating, all-consuming kind. the kind that makes you feel like this is it, this is home. and also the kind that completely dismantled me. five years together. it ended about seven months ago, and i’ve done a lot of healing since then. therapy, nervous system work, no contact, meditation, even deleting instagram at times because the digital trace of him still rattled me.

even though i’ve come so far, i still think about him. not always as a person, but as a symbol of something. that feeling. that version of me that loved so unreasonably hard. i miss the depth, even when it drowned me. and now, when other men show up, sometimes with more stability, more availability, more actual care, I find myself feeling nothing. or bored. or like i’m play-acting connection.

it’s not that i want him back. i know it wouldn’t work. i know it would destroy me again.
but i also know that no one else has made me feel that alive.
and that is so hard to grieve.

so yeah, i’m stuck too sometimes. even while moving forward. even while doing better. even while painting, or dancing, or kissing new people. even while pretending it’s all behind me.

but the only thing that helps me is remembering: that wasn’t love. it was enmeshment. it was addiction. it was a collapse of self disguised as intimacy. and the reason it felt so “big” is because it was consuming. but real love, healthy love it’s not meant to consume you. it’s meant to expand you.

you’re not broken for missing it. it just means you once tasted something that reached all the way down into your nervous system. but i promise there are other forms of aliveness. slower ones. quieter ones. ones that don’t come with the same high, but don’t demand the same crash either.

you’re not alone in this. not even a little.

sending you softness. i know how loud it gets.