I hate that.
Hate how easily I fell back into it, how normal it started to feel again.
For a moment, I’m watching myself from the outside, detached from my own body, following a script I didn’t consciously agree to. And something in me recoils from that realization.
I can’t keep doing this.
Enough.
This time, I don’t hesitate. There’s no pause. No second-guessing.
I move.
Straight toward the door.
Each step is deliberate, grounded in a certainty that feels sharper than anything I’ve had until now. I know what this is. I know what he is. I know exactly what this becomes if I stay.
My hand closes around the handle.
Cold. Solid. Real.
For the first time in a while, my mind isn’t racing. It isn’t fractured or circling back on itself. It’s steady, focused. Painfully clear.
I know what this looks like.
Possessive. Obsessive. Controlling. Consuming.
I’ve lived versions of this before. The same slow suffocation dressed up as something meaningful.
I draw in a slow breath, grounding myself in the present as I realize something important.
That wasn’t this.
That was performance. Masks layered over insecurity, people trying to take something from me they didn’t understand well enough to name. They built me up just enough to break me down, over and over again, until I didn’t recognize myself anymore.
My grip tightens on the handle as the memory settles.
This is different.
There’s no performance in him. No moment where something slips and reveals a softer truth underneath. No inconsistency I can point to and use as an exit.
He is exactly what he shows me.
Every time.
He’s a perpetual love bomb, in stasis, destined to shower me with love and affection. Because that’s exactly who he is. A giver—on his terms for sure—but someone who legitimately cares about every cell in my body, every thought in my mind.
He doesn’t need me diminished or uncertain to hold on to me.
He just needs me.
The thought catches in my chest, sharper than it should be, because that should make this easier. It should make the decision obvious.
It doesn’t.
Because this type of attention is also suffocating. It takes over,narrowing my perspective until I meld with him somehow. We’re so in sync that I forget where he stops and I begin. This level of affection isn’t intended to be sustained. But he’s like a bulb that never burns out, and I know that in some weird endless loop, I am the fuel that keeps him going.
That also means that he accepts every part of me. Every blemish. Every flaw. He’s made that abundantly clear, over and over, no matter how many times I’ve tried to show him exactly how imperfect I can be. He’s had many opportunities to do so, but he’s never used my behavior against me. Instead, he’s embraced my imperfections, worshipped them at his altar made in my image. I worried it was a false image, perfection on a pedestal, but he’s taken my flaws and elevated them into something beautiful.