She stood there, not quite lost, but not found either, like a ghost haunting her own memories. A little bemused. A little bewildered. The air felt heavy, like it knew her story and was silently grieving with her. She was spinning in her own thoughts, like a child on a merry-go-round that never stopped. Only this ride wasn’t filled with laughter, it was a cruel cycle, dragging her heart and brain through dizzying loops of torment and tenderness.

She didn’t really understand it, not fully. The ache, the longing, the way her chest clenched at the thought of him. It wasn’t simple heartbreak. It was confusion, thick and suffocating. She whispered to herself, dumbstruck, as if speaking would make it real:

“You disappeared, didn’t you?”

The words floated into the silence around her,

“You reminded me so much of my inadequacy… of how I couldn’t keep it all together. Why are you here again?”

The question bounced off the walls of her skull, repeating itself like an echo with no end. It was cruel, the way he returned, like a ghost summoned not by a spell, but by the ache of her longing and the memory of his smile.

She wanted to remember. She wanted to feel the pain again, as twisted as it sounded. All the jumbled emotions she couldn't unsort for months, how she survived each horrid night with whispers in her head that told her she was worthless. Useless. Broken. Little voices, soft but brutal, crushing her spirit one word at a time. She had reached the height of despair back then, yet even now, she was drowning in it again.

She closed her eyes.

A pool swirled around her, dark and bottomless. She was in it, arms heavy, breath shallow, heart gasping for clarity. How could something so painful still feel so sweet?

She looked back on it all. How she’d glare at his face, fire in her chest, hatred in her eyes, but then he’d smile. That smile. The one that melted through her layers of armor like sunlight on snow.

“He pushes me away with one arm,” she thought bitterly, “only to pull me closer than ever with the other.”

It made no sense. None of it. She tried to piece it all together but ended up drowning deeper in her thoughts. She was tired. Tired of crying over him, of forgiving him, of letting him in.

"What if he thinks I'm just a cheap, foolish little girl?" she asked herself.

She wasn’t. She knew she wasn’t.

“I just fell in love. But why is it so hard to let go? To say no? To not show up when I can. To tell him not to touch me. To not smile back when he does...”

Why?

He came to her when she least expected it, when love felt like a myth, when her heart had been locked behind layers of ice, and she’d forgotten what warmth felt like. Affection had become meaningless, just empty gestures with hollow promises.

But he broke through.