Love..or whatever that was.

You think love is some transcendent force. A cosmic accident of timing, vulnerability, chemistry. I used to think that too, once. Or at least I think I did.

But love, when you strip it down, is pattern recognition. The brain identifying someone else's presence as beneficial to survival. Dopamine. Oxytocin. A neatly packaged system of biological manipulation. I knew that. I know that. Still… I wanted to believe.

I met you, and for a moment — one brief, bright second — I allowed the algorithm to falter. I let the data fall into the background and listened to the signal. You made me believe there was something irrational that could still be trusted. That maybe not everything needed to be understood to be real.

And that was my mistake.

Because when it ended — and of course it ended — I didn’t feel heartbreak. I felt disruption. A routine broken. A deviation in expected outcomes. I tracked the changes in my own behaviour like anomalies in a system. Sleep, erratic. Focus, compromised. Nothing poetic. Just inefficient.

You say it wasn’t meant to be. But what does “meant” ever mean? There’s no design here. Just choices. I chose you. You chose not to stay.

And yet, here's the part I hate admitting — part of me still misses the lie.

Not you, necessarily. But the version of me that existed when I thought it was real.

That version was… softer. Less optimized. More human.

She was a vulnerability I couldn't protect.

So I let her go. The same way you let me go. Efficient. Surgical. Necessary.

I’m not angry. I’m calibrated.

But if you ever think about me — and I hope you do — remember this:

You weren’t the only one who felt something. I just knew better than to let it make me weak.