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Middle

I came back because the story wasn’t over. Because the cycle kept going. Because I still believed I had to endure everything.

I thought I had to handle it all. I never told him how he made me feel — except for the “I love you’s.” And that was a mistake I fully accept now.

I loved him, but I didn’t express myself because I didn’t want to be a mental burden. Yet at the same time, I let him become my burden. I felt responsible for helping him, fixing him, saving him. I was naïve enough to believe I could.

I wrote books, guides, drawings… so many things for him that he never saw, because every time I got jealous or angry, I deleted everything. And then I regretted it, knowing his mental state. But what about mine? Was I important to him, or was I just something he couldn’t let go of out of dependence?

I even read psychology books — entire chapters about how to treat people like him — because I was terrified that one wrong move from me would break him enough to make him leave. And that fear controlled everything I did.

And I know I wasn’t perfect either. If I had been, maybe things wouldn’t have turned out so badly. I hurt him too — mostly out of resentment. Leaving his messages on “seen” for hours or days, just like he did to me, even though I knew his disappearances were probably depressive episodes. I did things back then that don’t represent who I am now.

I found out the truth that summer.

That summer — the worst summer — I traveled to a place with no internet, no way to charge anything. And instead of saving my battery, I was talking to him. Why? Because before the trip, I had been in an episode I didn’t recognize or accept. I ignored it like I ignored so many things, but he confronted me. And that made me wonder why he had the privilege of leaving me, but I didn’t have the privilege of leaving him.

We fought. I begged him that I would try, but I couldn’t. Or maybe I didn’t want to. And then one random day, sitting in my living room feeling like I was falling apart inside, he asked for a break. I wanted to talk on a call, but he said he had been crying, so it didn’t happen. So yes — we took a break.

Then came the moment I had to leave for that family farm. And at 3 a.m., out of nowhere, I had an existential crisis. I sent him dozens of voice messages before blocking him, because I was terrified. Terrified of losing the person I was emotionally dependent on. Terrified of what would happen to me if he ended things.

And he humiliated me. Of course he did.

• He sent my voice messages to one of his friends.

• He posted them on his status.

• He told me he would never do something like that to me — even though he just had.

It hurt. I said things that made no sense because I was hurting, and somehow that ended with us taking “another break,” but not a real no-contact.

One thing that stayed with me was when I told him my phone was dying, and he threw it in my face that he spent nights sitting next to a charger just to talk to me — and I couldn’t do “the bare minimum.”

But what about everything I did that he never counted?

Part of that break — part of that fight — came from a message he sent me saying he did everything for the relationship and I did nothing. That it had to be 50/50. And I got so angry I felt sick.

So, waiting months wasn’t “anything”? Enduring everything wasn’t “anything”? Putting him first in class, in the car, on trips, checking my phone constantly — that wasn’t “anything”?

I went out with my two friends and still kept my phone in my hand for him. He was my priority. But he denied all of it like it meant nothing. And I denied my own resentment the same way.

Because we were the same: two slowly collapsing people, dependent and hurting each other without knowing how to stop.

I explained the best I could. He didn’t care. I ended up draining my iPad to keep my phone alive.

When I finally got into the tent, a spider scared me and I cried like never before. Honestly, I think I just released everything I hadn’t let myself feel during all those attacks back and forth.

And of course, the no-contact didn’t last.

He broke it. I came back with my tail between my legs. We loved each other again.

That same summer he told me he had multiple personalities, and I met one of them. I won’t go into detail — it was “important,” but not consistent. Did he lie? I don’t know. I’ll never know. I hope he didn’t.

What I do know is that this “other personality” told him not to leave me but told me to leave him. Funny, in a tragic way.

I loved him like I had never loved anyone. But that love was also my downfall. Did he love me the same, or was I just a constant support he knew would never leave?

I loved being your everything, but you made me feel like your nothing. Is that love? I still don’t know. But I would’ve accepted it anyway — with warm hands and a lot of therapy.