LOVE CRAZE

The Wrecking Ball

The paper on my kitchen counter had the name THERAPIST written in stark, heavy ink. It was a commitment I'd made to the future, but the ghosts of the past still lingered, especially Guy 2. If Leo was the quiet betrayal that made me build a wall, Guy 2 was the earthquake that proved my wall was too weak to withstand passion.

I met him a year after Leo vanished. That year had been miserable—a constant rotation of silent evenings, second-guessing every interaction, and trying to decipher where I had gone wrong. I was angry, depressed, and desperately lonely. I was also ready for something loud.

Guy 2, whose name was Noah, provided the noise.

He was the charismatic jerk personified: a tattoo artist, perpetually late, always laughing, and utterly unreliable. He didn't submit to my interview dates; he bulldozed them. I would ask a calculated, serious question about his five-year plan, and he would counter with, "Why are you always so worried about five years from now? Let's worry about five minutes from now." He was the first person who treated my guardedness as something to tease out of me, not something to respect.

And I ate it up.

His toxicity wasn't abandonment; it was emotional turbulence. He made me feel electric. Every text message from him was a dopamine hit; every last-minute plan felt like an adventure. With him, there was no time to feel lonely, because there was always a crisis, a dramatic profession of love, or a sudden, explosive fight. I confused the sheer intensity of the relationship with the depth of the connection.

He gave me the opposite of Leo: Leo gave me quiet certainty that vanished; Noah gave me loud uncertainty that was always present.

My logic was simple, if deeply flawed: If certainty leads to quiet betrayal, then perhaps chaotic uncertainty is the real, honest connection. I didn't have to analyze Noah because his flaws were visible, neon-bright, and undeniable. I thought, I know exactly what I'm getting into. He's bad, but at least he won't pretend to be good and then disappear.

For two years, the chaos served its purpose. It kept the anxiety of the Leo-sized void at bay. But Noah's unpredictability eventually became destructive. He would disappear for days without contact, only to show up at my apartment at 3 AM with flowers, demanding a grand forgiveness. He introduced me to the exquisite pain of gaslighting—making me question my own memory and sanity when I called him out on his dishonesty.

The relationship ended when I realized I was spending more time crying over his drama than I was enjoying his presence. The high was no longer worth the crash. I didn't wait for him to leave; I finally found the strength to kick him out myself.

The lesson I learned from Noah was the second, heaviest brick: Passion is a weapon, and intensity will burn you alive.

This realization led directly to my third relationship. I realized I couldn't handle passion (Noah), and I couldn't trust quiet certainty (Leo). The only thing left was controlled, predictable devotion—the kind that Guy 3 offered. The kind that was safe, if utterly boring.

Now, sitting alone with the name of a therapist on a sheet of paper, I saw the full, ridiculous cycle: I had swung wildly from fear of quiet abandonment to addiction to loud chaos, and finally to suffocation by controlled obsession. The wall wasn't just built to keep others out; it was built to keep me, Redempta, cycling between two false and toxic ideas of love.