It felt like dread.

Love wound through my chest, weaving itself through my ribs and around my lungs, squeezing tightly so each breath had to be pushed out and each step felt laborious. It ran through my veins, hot then icy cold, red with passion and just as vital to me as the blood it replaced. All of a sudden I couldn't remember a time when I wasn't in love. Drowning in it, choking on it, breathing it in and out, seeing it everywhere I looked, soaked in it. It was the background of everything I did. It replaced the car horns and street noise on my walk home, the sound of keyboards clicking and tapping at work, instrumentals in my music, chatter on the bus. It was everywhere, it was insidious.

But it wasn't good. It felt like panic. It felt like paranoia, like torture. I told myself love was anxiety, it was fear. Fear that I wasn't good enough, that at any moment he would decide he didn't need me around anymore, fear that he already had, but kept me around because it was fun to watch me break myself apart for him.

Love became knowing that he was using me but finding comfort in the fact that all I needed was a body to be loved by him, even if it was only for a couple of hours. Love became taking god that he texted me after weeks of silence, it became relief in the form of getting naked, it became silently begging him to look me in the eye, to recognize me as a human being, to say my name. Love became wondering if he even remembered my name. Love became wondering if he had ever even saved my number in his phone. Love became solace in a facetime call because at least then I could remind him that I was beautiful. Love became turning pick-up lines into genuine compliments in my mind because that was all I could get from him.

For four years love was turning myself inside out for him because I couldn't imagine waking up every day without him in my life. It was dreadful, it was terrifying, it was lonely. I don't think love is supposed to be lonely. And then, one Tuesday night in January, it became nothing at all. A hole in my chest that I wasn't responsible for but had to heal anyways.