it was limerence,

not love.

it was not love, it was limerence.

the first time i realized this, it was as bad as trying to find the pieces to my heart the moment its glasses broke.

the unfixed heartbreak, the one i never saw coming.

the thing is, i’d always see them coming. but no, not him.

a soul tie, a contract before i came—the straw that broke the camel’s back, as they say.

earthed me into a broken heart stacked upon another—dormant, just awaiting to unveil itself, and fuck me well into descent.

there’s nothing that could prepare you for limerence, especially at first. the surfacing of your idealizations. your fantasies. your untamed desires and the seductive, inducing ways that it’ll take you… far, far away from the beginning, and leave you with nothing but yourself and your shadows on the stage floor.

limerence, not love. oh, a sweet love i would of loved for him to be, though.

a past love, from a past life.

but, here’s something empowering to know!

this intense, what i would call, infatuation and fascination, was created from nobody other than myself—its real source. my very own energy reflecting the “glow” i saw in his smile, his eyes, his touch. his magnetic aura.

something i thought he gave me, himself, or to the world that was solely ours. it was me. i created it.

damn! i loved him so unconditionally, i would say after every aching release. angered into regret until Love reminded me, i was here when he happened.

oh, right. we were just happy to be here.

was it ever really love if it was clearly, oh so clearly now—non-reciprocal? just another unfolding of the inevitable.

he was my mirror of all mirrors. another other to my soul’s path.

limerence or not, he was just another… human being. like me.

imperfectly perfect.

now in the integration, awaiting to sync, perfectly like the 4:44s.

give grace. compassion. forgiveness. after all, to love is better than to not have loved at all. but limerence…

there’s no cure, you know.

just the fading away, fainter and fainter, each day, until rejection or something similar enters the dance floor.

limerence is the romanticism, the love of being in love. the drug of all drugs. it’s limerence, not love.

that kind of shock factor discounts things. flattens it. wrings out who we were and pulled me into experiencing people exactly as they are. a godsend.

it was like an entire puzzle came together in one fucked up night. but once i saw it, i couldn’t unsee it. my heart would sink again. the heart cycles running its course.

confidently, a piece of the puzzle that he saw before i ever did, his last awakening. his heart, stronger for the both of us. but me? my heart—freshly tender, bleeding—wasn’t ready to hear it, see it, or feel it fully.

i just cried in his arms as we held each other all morning. until we said goodbye. a kind of soul breaking i had never felt in my life.

who was he? who was i?

it was a catalysis of being love. of experiencing it, or should i say… maybe not ever having experienced Love at all, but limerence.