by Dylan Bice
I used to think love was the answer.
Now I know—
it’s just one of many questions.
Back then,
I was soft, wild, and starving.
Starving to be seen.
Starving to be held
by someone who would make the blooming feel safe.
Now?
Now I’ve loved harder than I thought was survivable.
I’ve watched the person I once called “home”
become someone I barely recognize in old photos.
We didn’t fail—
we just unraveled.
The threads became too tangled.
The love didn’t feel close enough.
And I—
I broke us in the end.
I started to pull away,
first in silence,
then in secrets.
I drank to blur the hunger.
I drank to forget the space between us,
to shut down the ache of being unseen.
And then—
I tried to fill the void in my chest
with men who laid no claim to my heart.
Bodies without names.
Nights without meaning.
All in the name of feeling something.
I betrayed the very thing I wanted to save,
and it cost me everything.
I was the one who packed my bags.
But he—
he was the one who closed the door.
And that sound?
That final click of the lock?
It echoes.
Even now.
Because even when you choose to leave,
it doesn’t mean your heart wanted to go.
And still,
I carry a tenderness for him.
For the version of us that laughed at dumb TV
and split the last bite of dinner
and knew, for a while,
that love was real.
But love doesn’t always last.
And sometimes the bravest thing you can do
is leave the garden you both planted—
because the soil stopped giving back.
I’ve fallen.
More than once.
Into people who only ever wanted to borrow my light.
Into hands that couldn’t hold me.
Into nights that promised warmth
but left me colder than before.
I’ve broken down
in bathrooms,
in bars,
on trains with strangers,
and in the arms of people I had no business loving.
Not because I didn’t know better—
but because knowing better doesn’t stop the loneliness.
I’ve tried to quiet the ache with alcohol.
I’ve blurred the edges,
thinking maybe I’d find myself in the soft focus.
But all I ever found
was a louder version of the questions I was trying to escape.
You see
I live with a brain that betrays me.
BPD.
Anxious attachment.
The kind of mental mess
that makes love feel like a game I was born losing.
Where silence is punishment,
where affection is currency,
and my emotions never learned how to whisper.
I fall fast.
I believe deeply.
And when I love,
I love like it’s oxygen.
Even when it burns.
And yeah—
I still want someone who just gets it.
Someone who won’t flinch when I care too much.
Someone who can look at the wild, complicated,
big-hearted garden inside me
and say,
“I see it. I won’t run.”
But these days,
I know better than to wait for someone else to water me.
These days,
I wake up and hold my own damn hand.
I go slow.
I tend my soil.
I forgive myself—daily.
For staying too long,
for leaving too soon,
for needing,
for hoping,
for still wanting to give love away like it won’t run out.
Because no matter how much I’ve hurt,
my heart has never closed.
I am still that person—
the one who loves out loud.
Who gives big, and messy, and without a receipt.
I’ve just learned to pour some of that love back into me, first.
I’ve learned to protect the flowers
while still offering the shade.
I’ve learned that loneliness doesn’t mean I’m broken—
just human.
And yeah—
some nights, I still ache.
I still imagine a someone
who meets me where I’m at,
who doesn’t shrink from the depth,
who lets me feel without fear.
But whether they come or not—
I will keep growing.
Because I am not just a garden.
I am the gardener.
The rain.
The sunlight.
And the love I carry?
It’s not a weakness.
It’s my wildest strength.
So no,
I’m not done loving.
I never will be.
But now
I know who to love first.