TW: Depictions of light emetophobia, descriptive panic attacks, and addiction.
I’m sat in the parking lot of Rideau Center. It’s the dead middle of winter. The gravel below me pierces through my thighs, marking small dark muddy squares on my jeans. His eyes lock on mine; I can read this worry on his sweet face. I knew it was the end; mind you, I couldn’t deal with it being the end, but in my heart, my stomach, my gut, I just knew. I’m sitting in the parking lot of Rideau Center, and though I’m surrounded by his arms, I am completely alone.
In January of my junior year of high school, I met a man. He was a friend of a friend, newly transferred to our small Catholic school. As he first introduced himself, I knew, I knew at that moment that I was in love, completely, earth-shattering love.
Stage one of limerence; attraction, that pull you feel towards someone.
My stomach filled with butterflies as I introduced myself. He was a thin, artsy guy, someone who looked like how reading a poem feels. I was an extroverted emo theatre kid who, in all honesty, was quite annoying. Never did I ever assume we could fit together; nevertheless, he’d give me a chance. We had fourth-period photography together, a sweetly easy course to round out an awfully hard day of academics. As friends, we meshed together incredibly, so much so that we often had to be separated in class. I loved his stupid pretentious folk music and the way his eyes would crease when he laughed too hard. I loved the way he understood me like I was a prayer he recited every single day. I never had to explain myself with him. He just knew. As we grew closer and closer, I couldn’t see a day without him in my life. I’d wake up every day, neurotically paint myself with concealer, slip into my shortest skirt and stack my eyes with the sharpest eyeliner. I’d listen to the playlist I made him on my ride to school. Every string, every melody, felt louder and deeper than it ever had before. All my school essays, my art projects, and my poems started to become all about him. It was almost as though I was intoxicated by him, like he was a sweet whiskey I couldn’t put down.
One night we went downtown to see all the Christmas lights in the trees. It was so cold that breathing felt sharp, and my toes began to solidify with every step, but truly, I couldn’t care less. He held my hands tightly in his as the music in our stupid knock off AirPods began to swell. He held my face as our lips met. There was no one in the world at that moment, except him and I.
Stage two of limerence, infatuation, that intense heartbeat palpitating in your chest.
I spent Christmas with his family and bought gifts for every single sibling. I combed through his hair as he recounted his past, who hurt him, and how it manifested. Every second with him felt like I was swimming through pure gold. Like I was living in a dream I refused to wake up from. There was not one flaw I could ever see in him. When I looked into his eyes, I saw peace for the first time in my very unpeaceful life.
Another night we spent the day in his house, blasting Gregory Alan Isakov and sharing all the thoughts in our heads. He walked me to the train station around midnight. Though I would typically feel tired and cold seeing as it is -20 degrees and the middle of the night, I just didn’t. As the train pulled in, the bullet pulling us away from each other, I took a step to walk away. He grabbed my hand. “I love you,” he said.
“I love you.”
Stage three of limerence; crystallization, the obsession begins to take over.
My grades began to drop, my attention was at a complete halt. I was so enthralled by him, that he was the only thing in my life. I changed my schedule to accommodate him, I morphed my social life to make more time with him. I was the Earth and he was my Sun, all I did revolved around him. When my mother informed me I was to go to Florida with her and her boyfriend for two weeks, I was far from happy. In a normal person’s world, vacations are the peak of the year. Vacations are relaxing, they are a break from the mundanity of life, but for me, they were hell. Being 3,000 kilometers from him was like being a thousand worlds away from any and all air supply. I was suffocating without him. Seven days into my trip I begged my mother to let me fly home. She did. I flew home the quickest I could and stayed with my aunt for the remaining week. The minute I touched down I texted him to set up a date. Just knowing I was in the same city as him was enough to put all my anxiety at ease.
Stage four of limerence; deterioration, when love starts to feel like a cigarette, addictive but killer.
The minute I heard the knock on the door, my heart jumped straight out of my chest and to the keylock. But when I opened it to his face, I knew something was wrong. I knew he was in love with someone else. The Rideau shopping trip turned sour the minute we arrived. I couldn’t keep my worries to myself. As I heard her name replace mine in his mouth, my heart had sunken to the floor. The laughs of the shoppers just past the glass pierced my ears. All was spinning, all was changing; and rapidly at that. My everything so suddenly became my nothing. As his comforts flew past my being and my ride ‘home’ drew silent I had just one last moment to be with him. Just outside his house, as the snow painted our skin. I wrapped my arms around him and wept into his shoulder. I want to think his tears were real, not some emotionless facade, but yes, we cried. I cried so hard I felt reality loosen from my grip. I stared into his soft loving eyes, now filled with disdain and pain. I couldn’t say goodbye.
Stage five of limerence, realizing something is deeply, deeply wrong with you.
In a logical brain, you’d be thinking, you’ve had the worst panic attack of your life, you’re sick and your first worry is to text him, really? But the issue is, when you’re sick, there is no logical brain. Some people get high, some get drunk, some hoard, some spend, I love. My addiction is love. I get high off every kiss and I get withdrawals when my person is gone. I’m an addict. This was when the silence of my hospital room grew far too loud. I was abandoned like I had been abandoned time and time before by friends, lovers, and family. I was sick, living through escapism for the following two years. We would text on and off, and we’d see each other in the halls, but when I saw him with her, my throat began to close, my knees would lock and I’d run to the nearest bathroom to puke. I’d long, yearn and cry. I had cried every single day since he left, and there were no signs of letting up. But I had slowly begun to understand myself, what makes me tick, why I am the way I am. I put my pain and agony on paper. My journals lay awake at night, aching with my thoughts. My stories rescued me from the hell I was surviving in. My stories and the joys of dialectical behavioral therapy, of course, had pieced me back together. I surely can’t say I’m cured, frankly, I wonder if a cure even exists. I’ll always be a love-sick poet, stringing her feelings together through a pen, and I’ll always love with my full heart and soul; but maybe this time I’ll love me first. I’m sat in the hall of my university finishing one of my first articles for the school paper. It’s my first year in the journalism program. I’m finally content in the fact that I am an emotional woman. I’m a writer, I suffer, but I make it into art. I’m at peace with myself and I’m at peace with my past.
