A love that once felt like air slowly became something I had to fight just to survive.
They say love is supposed to feel like life—like oxygen, like something that fills your chest and keeps you going.
But you—
you planted something else in me.
At first, it was soft.
Petals instead of pain.
Roots instead of reasons to leave.
You made something fragile feel like it could survive inside a place as restless as my chest.
And God, it was beautiful.
The way you spoke felt like sunlight filtering through ribs.
The way you stayed—at least in the beginning—felt like rain, like something I didn’t have to beg for.
You made me believe that maybe, just maybe, I was a place worth growing in.
So I let you.
I let you scatter seeds in places I used to protect.
I let your words take root in parts of me that were still healing.
I let your presence wrap around my lungs like something gentle—
until it wasn’t.
Because flowers don’t just bloom.
They spread.
They take space.
They don’t ask if there’s enough room—they just grow.
And suddenly, I couldn’t breathe the same way anymore.
Every inhale felt heavier, like I was carrying something I couldn’t name.
Every exhale felt incomplete, like I was leaving pieces of myself behind just to make space for you.
You were still beautiful.
That’s the worst part.Even when it started to hurt, even when my chest felt too full, too tight—
I still saw the petals.
I still saw the colors.
I still told myself, this is what love looks like.
But love isn’t supposed to suffocate you.
It isn’t supposed to feel like you’re drowning in something that once saved you.
It isn’t supposed to make you question why breathing—something so natural—suddenly feels like a struggle.
You made something grow in me that I didn’t know how to remove.
And now I’m left here,
trying to survive something that looks like beauty
but feels like loss.
Because how do you let go of something that once made you feel alive?
How do you tear out the roots without breaking everything else inside you?
I don’t hate you.
I hate that I let something so pretty take up so much of me.
I hate that I confused being needed with being loved.
I hate that I stayed long enough for your absence to feel like withdrawal.
You made flowers grow in my lungs.
And now I’m learning—slowly, painfully—
that not everything beautiful is meant to stay.
Some things are only meant to teach you
how to breathe again
on your own.
