It feels like drowning, but not the kind of drowning where someone is in the middle of a deep sea, fighting for their life to take a breath above the water. It feels like the kind of drowning where you are just laying face down in a single inch of water, and everyone around you is yelling “Just stand up!”, but you can’t. You just lay there, breathing more and more water in, motionless, lifeless. You can look around a crowded room and see everyone carrying on eating, talking, laughing, and you find yourself wondering when the last time you laughed was… or when the last time you had eaten was. It seems as though time has been standing still for you and has been moving three times as fast for everyone else around you. You think constantly of this person who broke not only your heart, but your spirit, and your will. For someone who has caused such pain, the thought of their lips on yours brings you a peace that nothing else seems to. You wake up, and for a split second, you think everything is okay, and then a minute or two passes and reality hits. You find you are suddenly so sore and so tired that the mere thought of sitting up and planting a single foot on the floor makes you so utterly helpless that you can’t help but close your eyes again, praying that the next time you open them, the nightmare will be over. Something is so desperately missing from you that it feels as though your most vital organ has stopped functioning. It makes you wonder about love, and about loss. You find yourself asking, is it even possible to love someone who doesn’t think you are enough? Why would anyone repeatedly take the emotional abuse of trying to please a man who is never going to be made happy? Did you really love him, or were you just addicted to the pain, the exquisite pain of wanting somebody who was so unattainable? You want to pick your head up, and breathe the air around you that you see everyone else enjoying so much, but you have forgotten how. Infuriated that you had a chance to save your heart, but you trusted him enough to not make what he had said was his biggest mistake again. Knowing you had made all of your decisions since meeting him with the careful consideration of staying together. Believing every single time he told you he loved you with every fiber of your being, and loving him back so much. Being given up on, abandoned, shut out, vulnerable, alone. You are the most helpless you have ever been, wanting so much to smile again, and feeling like you will never, ever find the strength.