“My friend laughed, ‘We’re like a couple!’”
And suddenly I froze.
I don’t call friends just to chat.
I don’t stay on the phone for an hour, losing track of time as if the world had slipped away.
Something felt VERY wrong. Why didn’t I notice it sooner?
That night I couldn’t sleep. The next 48 hours turned into a slow-motion nightmare. Flashbacks tore through me, the tears, the pain, the weight of you pressing in. I heard your voice again, flat and indifferent: “You were the saddest person in the world.” It ripped me open, pulling me back into those days, when I kissed in tears, when every touch carried the weight of pain, when desire and despair tangled until I couldn’t tell them apart.
I remembered the throbbing headaches after the “breakup”, fighting just to stay focused and awake. Red, the sofa was red, too soft beneath me as I tried to write my next sentence in my assignment.
I remembered the Thames, the shimmer of stone, the raw shout I hurled into the shining river from my chest.
This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper. Sliding in a relationship without an intention is the worst way to begin a story. It starts in innocence: friends, a light hello hug. Then closer friends, an embrace that lingers a heartbeat too long. Step by step, the line dissolves, each touch weighted, each moment steeped in a sweetness that rots into ache. And before I realized it, I was already deep into the swirl. My rationality pleaded, but my desire bit back, hungry, restless, unheeding. There is no turning back, only the quiet tragedy of slipping into love like a dream, and waking to find my skin seared, my body blistered, burned alive by a fire of my own desire too merciless to touch.
I was an underground girlfriend, buried in dark silence, never allowed to breathe the open air. In truth, not even a girlfriend at all—only a “friend,” a fragile disguise, a word people cling to when they cannot face what trembles beneath. And still, I was wrong. There was no love waiting there. Only admiration, endless, glittering, hollow. It dazzled like glass catching light, but it was never love. The capacity simply did not exist in you. I reached with all my being toward a vessel that could never hold me. I was the light, and you could never be anything more than my shadow.
If you are a girl and open for exploration, it is the common story, isn’t it? The way certain beginnings blur. Boundaries slip, intimacy drifts into ambiguity. At first, the fearful ones call it “exploration,” laugh and call it “fun.” But without words, without an anchor, someone always ends up bleeding. And back then, it was me.
For hours I was dragged back into the past, my mind locked, replaying every wound on an endless loop. When I finally spoke it aloud to a friend, my body gave me away, shaking, trembling beyond my will, as if memory itself had seized my flesh. The past refused to release me.
Friends call it PTSD trigger. I sat with that for days, but I chose to call it protection. The angry self that will not let anyone treat me unfairly. The grieving self who shields me from harm in every way it knows how. The broken, aching self that refuses to succumb to desire, no matter how much it ignites. And lastly, the fearful self, longing to flee, to find some place safer than here. Yes, that’s PTSD, but that’s also the sensitivity to protect myself.
So instead of trying to fix it, I chose to trust it. To honor it. To let these selves stand guard over me, until, at last, the path of healing can find its way to me.
Weirdo friends, when I tried to explain this to friends in real life, they don’t relate nor understand. But I hoped one of you, of all people, might.
If you don’t, I’m happy for you. Really.