PART 2: When Winter Came: Chasing Warmth in All the Wrong Places

And winter came.

I soon realized that I was craving more than you could give me. This situation tingled an itch I've carried for so long—the want to be loved, heard, seen. But what my brain was used to was searching for it in places I couldn't get it.

There's a pattern here, one that started long before your green eyes ever looked my way.

As a child, I learned to survive on scraps of attention. I became an expert at reading rooms, at making myself smaller, at celebrating the rare moments when I was truly seen. I learned that love was something you earned through performance, not something freely given.

So when you looked at me like I was the most beautiful thing to exist, my starving heart feasted. When you touched me with tenderness, my skin—so unused to gentle hands—memorised every fingerprint.

As Lana Del Rey says in cinammon girl ,

There's things I wanna say to you

But I'll just let you live

Like if you hold me without hurting me You'll be the first who ever did

And for a moment, I thought you might be that first.

My body, so accustomed to love that leaves bruises, didn't know how to interpret your gentle touch except as a prelude to inevitable pain.

But here's what happens when you're used to drought: You mistake a glass of water for an ocean.

The breaking

1/5

He looks at me like I am the most beautiful thing to exist.

He touches me with tenderness.

He can read through me like a book.

He laughs the most with me.

He has healed me in ways he doesn't know.

And yet that's all it is—

It's not something, it's not nothing.

That leaves my body aching for hours and my heart craving for days.

2/5

You looked like danger. I knew that, yet I still opened up my heart to you.

You were tender. I craved every interaction, the lingering hands every time we said goodbye.

The silent "I want you"s. But I should have known you were danger

In the end i realised some people can hold you gently and still break you completely. The softest touch can leave the deepest wound when it's eventually withdrawn

The truth is, what I wanted from you was impossible. I wanted you to fill a void that existed long before we met. I wanted you to prove that I was worthy of being chosen, of being a priority, of being loved completely.

3/5

Did you know how much I loved you? Did you feel loved by me?

4/5

Stop looking at me with those eyes. I'm not your vacation, I want to be your home.

5/5

You felt like home, just for a moment. But homes aren't built on shaky foundations.

And that's the thing about situationships when you're carrying old wounds—they feel like familiar pain dressed up as new love. They recreate the very patterns you're trying to escape.

I was looking for someone to save me from drowning, but I hadn't yet learned how to swim.

Stay tuned for Part 3, where the real healing begins...