He held my hand like the world would collapse if he let go.
And for a moment, I believed him.
I believed that the warmth in his touch meant something permanent.
But permanence doesn't live in his eyes.
It lives in absence.
In the spaces where I wasn't enough.
Where I was invisible while he moved through rooms full of others.
People said we were happy.
They said it with certainty, with envy, with trust.
They saw laughter, dinners, photos ,fragments of a carefully curated illusion.
They did not see me shrinking,
folding myself smaller to fit the version of love he allowed.
He never lied outright.
That would have been simpler.
He let me believe in kindness, in devotion, in care
then contradicted it by choosing everyone else while keeping me tethered.
Love, I realized, was not in his attention.
It was in the absence of it.
And still, I returned.
Again.
Again.
Because a loop can feel like safety if you ignore the pattern long enough.
I saw it then.
Not in the smiles, not in the soft words, not in the touches that made me forget the world.
I saw it in the gaps.
In the way his attention was rationed,
divided among everyone but me when it counted.
Every kind gesture became predictable.
Every whispered "I love you" became a signal, not a promise.
I could map the rhythm of disappointment.
Trace the path from warmth to absence like a blueprint etched into my chest.
I wanted to hate him.
I tried.
But hatred is too blunt for loops that feel like home.
So instead, I watched.
Measured.
Learned every step of the pattern until I could anticipate it:
the subtle withdrawal, the distant laugh, the fleeting touch that pulled me back in.
I realized the truth:
It wasn't love that kept me there.
It was repetition.
A cycle, predictable, unavoidable.
A machine masquerading as devotion.
And still, I stayed.
Because some errors feel safer than freedom.