Prologue
Love doesn’t hurt.
Except when it’s real.
I no longer remember the exact moment when everything started to go wrong.
There was no explosion, no shouting, no door slamming. Just a slow drift. An almost invisible slide. Like a hand closing around your wrist, gently, until you realize—too late—that you can no longer break free.
At first, there was him.
His dark gaze. The way he looked at me as if I were the only real thing in a blurry world. He didn’t speak much, but when he did, it was always right. Precise. Intimate. As if he knew me better than I knew myself.
I remember thinking: *Finally, someone who sees me.
I’ve never known how to love halfway.
With me, everything is excessive—emotions, silences, heartbeats. When I love, I give myself completely. I forget myself. I almost erase myself. And he… he understood that very quickly.
He loved me intensely.
Too intensely.
The first time I felt something crack was during an ordinary evening. Nothing important. A message I took too long to read. A smile I gave to someone else. His gaze darkened, imperceptibly. Then he smiled. The kind of smile that doesn’t reach the eyes.
“You’re doing this on purpose?”
“Doing what?”
“Driving me crazy.”
I laughed.
I thought it was flattering. I was far from understanding that this word—*crazy*—would become our daily reality.
He said it was because he loved me.
Always.
Every reproach, every tension, every argument ended with the same sentence.
“I love you too much.”
As if love excused everything. As if pain were proof.
With him, everything was intense. The looks. The silences. The kisses too. They were never tender for very long. There was always that urgency, that almost violent need to possess me, to keep me against him, as if I would disappear the moment he let go.
Sometimes, I liked it.
And that’s what frightens me the most today.
I see myself again in his apartment at night, the lights off, my heart beating too fast. His hand in my hair, his lips against my neck, and that strange sensation: feeling desired… and trapped at the same time.
“Tell me you’re mine.”
“I’m yours,” I whispered.
I thought it was love.
I thought giving yourself entirely was proof of maturity, of passion. No one had taught me that love shouldn’t be frightening. That love shouldn’t take your breath away in any way other than happiness.
The arguments arrived quietly.
Always followed by burning reconciliations.
He shouted. I cried. Then he took me in his arms, swore he would change, that he was just afraid of losing me.
And I believed him.
Because I loved him.
Because leaving would have meant admitting that none of this was normal.
I was never a silent victim.
I answered back. I defended myself. I shouted too. But the more I resisted, the more violent our relationship became. As if we fed off each other’s pain. As if calm itself terrified us.
He said that without me, he would destroy himself.
That I was his only stability.
His anchor.
So I stayed.
I didn’t yet know that love isn’t supposed to make you choose between yourself and the other.
That love isn’t a constant battle.
That love isn’t a wound you keep open just to feel alive.
That night, when he slammed the door for the first time, I understood that something had broken beyond repair. I stayed alone in the silence, hands trembling, heart in pieces… and one obsessive thought:
What if loving like this were the most dangerous thing I would ever do?
I didn’t know yet that it was only the beginning.
