Her Burning Desire

Love has many calamities. It is never gentle, never predictable, and definitely never easy to survive. There is the light kind—the harmless version people write poems about. The kind that gives you butterflies, makes your knees weak, paints your cheeks red with shy happiness. And then… there is the other kind. The kind that devours you whole. The kind that steals sleep, sanity, and sense. The kind that leaves you pacing the edges of yourself, trying to hold on while your heart burns. That is the only kind of love I’ve ever known. Not the fairytale kind. Not the mutual kind. But the kind that pulls your identity apart thread by thread. The kind that makes you shift your personality just to be enough for someone who never asked you to—but who also never stopped you. It begins softly, sweetly, like honey dripping from a poisoned spoon. You taste it before you realize what it really is. I wasn’t prepared the first time. I didn’t see the trap. But now? Now I can recognize the pattern—the ache that never leaves, the longing that feeds on hope, the way I keep trying anyway. Pain used to terrify me. Now I’ve given it a place to live. It curls against my ribs like a familiar shadow, settling deep in the pit of my heart. Some days I stack new bricks, building walls to keep it out. Other days, when I’m too slow, depression and anxiety slip through the cracks like smoke. IT. STILL. HURTS. But tears don’t come anymore. I’m dry—emptied, drained, a well that’s been dipped into one too many times. So I’ve learned to sit with the ache. To let it happen. To let it shape me, whether I like it or not. Oh— I should probably introduce myself. My name is Tamara, and I’m twenty years old. This is the story of how I gave up on love. Haha—JUST KIDDING. This isn’t a surrender story. It isn’t a soft romance, either. This is the truth—the messy, breathless, complicated truth—about the kind of love that burns you before it ever warms you. So, let’s begin.