I see it.
I do not need it explained to me again.
I see how love sharpens you,
how your attention turns forensic,
how care becomes vigilance,
how wanting turns into watching.
I see the way you try to protect
by pre-empting,
by leaving first,
by cutting the wire before it sparks.
But listen to me now,
without turning this into an indictment of yourself.
Understanding you
does not require me to accept disappearance.
I can see your fear
and still expect presence.
I can honour your nervous system
without building my life around its alarms.
What you call self-destruction
does not absolve you of impact.
What you call intensity
still lands as absence.
You say love overwhelms you.
I believe you.
But love also overwhelms me
when it vanishes without dialogue,
when I am removed instead of spoken to,
when care is expressed as control over access.
Do not mistake my empathy
for consent to be collateral.
I am not asking you
to love me halfway.
I am asking you
to stay in the room
when it gets loud inside you.
Because leaving is not honesty.
Leaving is avoidance with good vocabulary.
Blocking me is not protection.
It is a decision made alone
that I am forced to live inside.
You are right about one thing:
feelings fade.
Which is why love is not your intensity.
Love is what you do
when intensity asks you to run
and you choose to speak instead.
If you tell me,
"I am spiralling,"
that is intimacy.
If you tell me,
"I need to slow this down,"
that is maturity.
If you tell me,
"I am afraid I will disappear if I do not change how I love,"
that is courage.
But if you vanish
and call it self-awareness,
do not ask me to clap for your insight.
I will not become
a lesson you learned too late
or a ghost you romanticize safely.
I am not your rehearsal
for a future where you finally stay.
You say you are not equipped for love.
Then equip yourself.
Not by hardening.
Not by retreating.
But by learning how to remain imperfectly present
without turning love into a performance review.
I am not here
to be proof that you can love.
I am here
to be met.
And if you come back,
it cannot be because you miss me.
It has to be because
you are willing to sit with discomfort
without turning it into distance.
I see you.
But seeing you does not mean
I will carry what you refuse to hold.
Love is not gentler because it is afraid.
It is braver because it stays.
That is the fight.
And I will not do it alone.
