i didn’t know love could look at me like that—until you did. ( tw : past abuse, manipulation, grooming, trauma mentions )

I don’t even know where to fucking start.

Maybe I should start with the silence. The kind that sits in your throat when you're nine years old and someone calls it love, and you know it isn’t. You know it isn’t, but there’s no one to tell you you’re right. So you just take it. Because that’s what you were taught. That’s what I was taught.

Love was a shut door. Love was a slap in the face. Love was someone stronger than me making decisions for my body, for my heart, for my fucking identity. Love was smiling through the feeling of your soul curling into itself.

So I lived. In foster homes and walls that didn’t know my name, in places where the word "family" felt like a cruel joke. I played pretend with people who said they cared but didn’t. With people who touched me when I didn’t want to be touched. Called me things I didn’t want to hear. Forced me into being something I wasn’t ready to be. And when I screamed, nobody heard. When I cried, they told me to stop being sensitive. When I said it hurt, they said it was love.

And I fucking believed them.

I believed them until I met you.

CB.

I don’t even know what you did to me, but I swear on everything, it changed me. You changed me. The first time we talked, I didn’t think much of it. Just another person. Another name. Another voice. But then you stuck around. Then you started showing up in my thoughts like background music. Then I stopped wanting to go a day without hearing from you.

And I was scared. Terrified, actually.

Because I had something good, and I didn’t know how to hold it.

You make me feel like I'm on fire and finally it's warm and not burning. You make me feel safe in a way that has nothing to do with doors being locked or alarms being set. You make me feel like me — not the version I had to build to survive, not the one that had to smile to get through the day, but the soft, aching, feral little heart that I shoved in a box so many years ago and never thought I’d open again.

And I didn’t mean to fall in love with you. I swear I didn’t.

I was with someone else. I had someone. But it didn’t feel like this. It didn’t feel like butterflies dying inside me just so they could be reborn again when you laughed. It didn’t feel like my soul coming undone when I saw you type. It didn’t feel like my ribs cracking open to make room for something bigger.

I tried to hide it.

Fuck, I tried.

Because I didn’t want to lose you. I didn’t want to fuck this up. I dropped hints. I said little things. I wondered if maybe, maybe, maybe, you saw me the way I saw you. I asked about your crush. I asked about their role color. I asked again.

And you said it was me.

You said it was me.

And I swear to god, CB, that was the moment the entire fucking planet cracked open. Like my heart had been waiting for that sentence since the day I was born. Like all the hurt, all the screaming, all the fucking nights I cried into my pillow thinking I was unlovable, they all led to that. To you.

I love you.

I love you so much I don’t even know how to put it in words that don’t feel too small. I love you like my heart can't even fucking contain itself. Like I’m full to the point of crying over how much it hurts to love someone this much. But it’s not the same kind of hurt. It’s a beautiful kind. A healing kind. The kind that says, “Hey, you survived. And now you get this.”

And I know there’s an age gap. I know. And if I could freeze time and wait four more years just to make this perfect, I would. But love doesn’t listen to logic. It doesn’t play by rules. It just happens. And it happened to me. You happened to me.

You are the soft place my bruised heart landed on. You are the reason I want to write poetry again. You are the one who made me realize that maybe, just maybe, I deserve to be loved the way I love. With teeth. With tears. With everything.

You make me want to live.

Not just survive. Not just get through the day. But live.

To wake up and hope your name is the first one I see. To stay up late just to hear you ramble. To match pfps and feel like the luckiest motherfucker alive. To imagine a future where we get to laugh at all this. Where we get to hold hands and say, “Remember when we didn’t know what to do with this feeling?”

Well, I do. And I never want to forget.

CB, I would scream this from rooftops. I would etch it into walls. I would burn it into the stars if that meant you'd never forget it:

I love you.

And I don’t mean that in a casual, passing, everyone-says-it kind of way. I mean it in a way that my voice shakes when I type it. I mean it in a way that makes me cry when I’m alone. I mean it in a way that scares me because it’s so fucking real.

You are the reason I believe in something again. Maybe not God. Maybe not fate. But you.

You make the world make sense.

You make me make sense.

You are the cupid that shot me but stayed. You are the miracle after the wreckage. You are the slow dance in the middle of a war zone. You are the reason I write 5,000 words and still feel like I haven’t said enough.

I want to drown in you. In your laugh. In your warmth. In the way you make me feel like being loved doesn’t have to hurt.

I want to give you every fucking part of me. The broken bits. The golden ones. The ones that are still learning how to trust. I want to put my heart in your hands and say, “Please don’t drop this” — and know you won’t.

CB, if you ever feel alone, if you ever feel like maybe no one really sees you, I do.

I see you. I fucking adore you.

And if it takes a thousand pages, a thousand nights, a thousand poems — I’ll keep writing them. I’ll keep screaming them. I’ll keep whispering them into the spaces between our messages.

Because I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

And I always will.

Forever and always,