Withdrawal

Letters from the Past

It wasn’t love in any clean, healthy sense.

It was a dependency.

The kind your body builds without asking you first.

When it was there, everything in me aligned.
When it wasn’t, I felt it immediately—like something essential had been removed and nothing inside me knew how to function without it.

Every “no” was not a word.

It was impact.

Sharp. Direct. Repeated.

Like something cutting into me again and again, until the reaction stopped showing on the outside, but inside it kept happening, deeper, quieter, more permanent.

And I knew.

That’s the part that makes it worse.

I knew I wasn’t being chosen.
I knew I was asking for something that wasn’t being given.
I knew I was staying in a place that was breaking me.

But knowing didn’t matter.

Because this wasn’t happening in my thoughts.

It was happening in my body.

When it was gone, I didn’t just miss it.

I went into withdrawal.

Restless.
Unstable.
Looking for it everywhere like something I had lost control over.

Trying to go back to the last moment it felt real.
Trying to recreate something that only existed under specific conditions that I could never control.

And every time it didn’t come back—

it didn’t hurt less.

It landed the same.

It wasn’t dignity.
It wasn’t self-respect.
It wasn’t logic.

It was a need to return to that version of me.

The one that only existed there.

The one that felt alive, expanded, undeniable.

That’s what I was chasing.

Not a person.

A state.

And what’s harder to admit—

is that the intensity didn’t push it away.

It didn’t scare it off.

It held it there.

There was something about the way I felt, the way I expressed it, the way I didn’t hide any of it—

that didn’t make it run.

It stayed.

Not to give me what I needed.

But not to leave either.

And that’s its own kind of damage.

Because it keeps you suspended.

Not chosen.

Not released.

So you stay.

Breaking in slow motion.

Fully aware.

Unable to stop.

And even now—

I don’t question why I felt that way.

I question why something that strong

was never enough

to be returned.