Love isn't pretty most of the time. It's not candles or cute pictures or knowing exactly where you stand. Sometimes it's staring at the ceiling at 3 a.m. wondering when things started to feel wrong and why you didn't notice sooner. It's reading into the way they don't look at you the same anymore. It's feeling stupid for caring this much and still not knowing how to stop. Love can make you desperate in ways you don't recognize. You start shrinking yourself, choosing your words carefully, hoping if you're quieter, easier to love, they'll stay. You blame yourself for everything. For being too emotional. For not being enough. For wanting reassurance like that somehow makes you weak. You replay conversations until your head hurts, trying to find the moment you ruined everything. And when it ends, it doesn't end clean. It lingers. It's random breakdowns in the car, in the shower, in the middle of the day for no real reason. It's missing someone who hurt you and hating yourself for missing them anyway. It's wanting to forget and also wanting them to feel the loss as badly as you do. It's trying to act normal while your chest feels heavy all the time. Love isn't always beautiful. Sometimes it just wrecks you. Sometimes it leaves you carrying things you never asked for. And sometimes the hardest part isn't losing them; it's figuring out how to be yourself again after you gave so much of you away.