The Language of Love I Speak Alone.

I have written love letters, pouring my heart onto pieces of paper for those who remain blurry in my mind—letters I keep safely in my head, so I need not burn them out of spite or cringe at their vulnerability, letting them quietly slip away with time.

I’ve imagined futures with people who walked away without ever looking back. It felt like a quiet comfort at times, but I wouldn’t recommend it—because the pain of being left behind, and the loneliness of letting go, cuts deeper than you realise.

At some point in my journey with love, I became convinced that maybe—just maybe—love is a language I speak fluently, but no one else has ever learned to understand.

I don’t remember the last time I truly dreamt of love. Not the fantasy of romance, but the real kind. The kind where someone chooses you—not just when it’s easy, but when it’s hard.

I think I lost that dream somewhere around the end of my teenage years. When I started untying the knots people tied around my sense of self. When I started rebuilding myself, slowly and quietly, from rubble and shame and silence.

In my early twenties, I gave love a try again. I thought maybe this time, I would find the one. But I didn’t. Instead, I found illusions, patterns that repeated themselves, and people who liked the idea of me more than the real, complicated, sometimes broken me.

I watched love crumble in places where it was supposed to thrive—marriages falling apart, hearts splitting in silence, relationships turning into routine. And the “what ifs” settled in like dust.

What if I’m too much to carry? What if I’m the one who’s always left behind? What if no one ever chooses me, because no one ever learns the language of love I speak?

I remember using art to speak my love. I painted. I wrote. And eventually, I gave—a lot. Maybe even parts of myself.

Because I love hard. I don’t know how to do it halfway.

I read once that when a painter loves you, you’ll live forever in colours. And when a poet loves you, you’ll live forever in words.

But I forgot—

I am the one who breathes life into memories,

The quiet soul who makes others live forever—

while I, myself, am not destined to live forever.

I read about love, I imagined it, and at some point in my life, I even wrote about it—using the fragments I gathered from stories, dreams, and silent wishes.

I wrote and wrote, weaving words until there was nothing left to read, imagine, or say. Tears blurred my vision, my hands trembled as I breathed life into every line, capturing love in its most romantic light—but deep inside, somewhere quiet and hidden in my heart, I knew the truth.

I poured all of myself into a void.

Because no one speaks the language I speak.

No one ever truly bothered to learn it.

Taylor Swift once wrote:

“And I wouldn’t marry me either, A pathological people pleaser, who only wanted you to see her.”

Those lines haunted me. Because I’ve been her. I’ve wanted so badly to be seen that I forgot how to protect myself. I gave without being asked. I stayed long after I felt unwanted. I tried to earn love in ways love should never be earned.

But I’m tired.

I’m tired of translating my heart into dialects that are never spoken back.

I’m tired of mistaking attention for affection.

Of feel like my softness is a weakness in a world that rewards detachment.

Still, despite all this, there is a quiet part of me that remains hopeful. Not in the way that waits for someone to come and fix me. But in the way that says—I can still be whole, even if no one ever learns my language.

I can still be worthy, even if no one ever says, I love you back in the way I need to hear it.

I’m learning—slowly—that love doesn’t always mean hearing it back.

I’ve tried, truly, to learn the languages others speak, thinking maybe if I switched mine, maybe if I mirrored theirs, they’d finally see me.

Love me.

Understand me.

If there were awards for learning how others love, my walls would be full. Trophies for every version of myself I became, just to be wanted.

But at the end of the day, what are those awards worth when no one ever tries to understand the love I speak?

The kind of love that burns fiercely, but in silence.

The kind that is subtle, but unshakably strong.

The kind that lurks in the branches— unseen to many, yet present, reaching, holding.

The kind of love that ruins me, because it dares to imagine being returned.

I don’t crave the loud, glittering fireworks, nor the wildfire that consumes.

I want the whisper. The gentle, steady echo that stays— even if quiet.

Even if small.

Even if it’s just once, but meant fully.

But maybe, just maybe, I was only ever meant to speak it, not receive it.

And still—I love.

God, I still love.

Because this language—my language—is mine. And it is beautiful.

Even if I speak it alone.