He smiled at me like I was the only one in the room.
And for a few hours, I believed it.
Outside, we were perfect.
People whispered, admired, envied.
A couple who had it all.
A love story written in daylight.
But daylight is honest.
It exposes shadows.
At night or when the world wasn't watching he fractured me in ways no one could see.
A laugh at my expense, a comparison I couldn't counter, a subtle indifference that whispered I wasn't enough.
I learned quickly how little I mattered when the audience disappeared.
And yet.
Every time we were alone, he was kind, soft, attentive.
He kissed me like he meant it, held me like he needed me, told me I was everything.
I wanted to believe him. I wanted to live in that room, in that small bubble of warmth.
But the truth bled through the cracks:
What did it mean to be loved by someone who shared the world with everyone else?
What was love if it didn't protect you when no one was watching?
The outside saw devotion.
Inside, I saw absence.
And I stayed, because even absence felt warmer than being alone
Every smile he gave me carried a shadow.
Every "I love you" felt measured.
I began to count the pauses between words,
the hesitations that told me more than his lips ever could.
When he laughed with someone else, I felt it first in my chest
a slow sinking, a weight I couldn't lift.
Not jealousy, exactly.
More like erosion.
Piece by piece, he reminded me that I was replaceable.
Still, when he touched me, it felt electric.
When he whispered my name, it felt like he meant it.
And I wanted to cling to that spark,
like a drowning person clings to driftwood.
I started questioning myself:
Was I too sensitive? Too demanding? Too weak to deserve him fully?
And the cruelest part: he never gave me a reason.
Only the dissonance between his hands and his actions,
between the man I saw in private and the man the world saw in public.
Love, I realized, isn't measured in moments of warmth.
It's measured in what remains when no one is watching.
And what remained for me was a quiet, gnawing emptiness.