Your nervous system isn’t confused. It’s doing exactly what it was trained to do.
It was 1:47 a.m. and I was scrolling through old photos of someone who used to make me cry more than he made me laugh.
I wasn’t looking for closure. I was looking for a feeling — that specific rush I used to get when he’d disappear for three days and then show up at my door with flowers and an apology that felt like sunlight after a storm. I missed the storm. I missed the sunlight after it. I missed him, even though some nights I used to sit on my bathroom floor, wondering what I’d done wrong.
I remember thinking: What is wrong with me?
I wasn’t naive. I could list, in perfect detail, every reason that the relationship was bad for me. I just told my therapist how bad it was two days earlier. And yet here I was, at nearly 2 a.m., aching for a person my own mouth had described as harmful.
If you’ve ever missed someone who hurt you — an ex, a parent, a friend, a boss — and then hated yourself a little for missing them, I want you to know something before we go any further.
You are not weak. You are not broken. You are not “addicted to chaos,” whatever that phrase is supposed to mean. There is an actual, well-documented psychological reason your brain does…
