When Love Felt Easy

We got together when I wasn't even searching for love.

It was a birthday party with a friend — blaring music, stale pizza boxes, and too many people in a tiny apartment. I was hugging the railing of the balcony, desperate to get some air away from the chaos, when he came up next to me and made some light, witty remark about the party mix. I laughed, not so much at the joke as at the surprise, and that's where it started. Five-minute conversation that ended up lasting an hour, and by the end of the evening, I was saving his number with a grin I couldn't fathom.

He messaged me the next day. "Still think the playlist was tragic?" That was his opening line. I remember it to this day, word for word. And after that, there was this gradual, gorgeous unfolding — daily messages, teasing banter, late-night conversations that ran into early mornings. He made me feel like I was the only one in the world he was interested in speaking with. And perhaps I was, for a time.

I met him for coffee two weeks later. It wasn't a big date — just a stroll through the park — but the way he gazed at me put me in a movie. He listened so well, recalled the smallest details I revealed, and threw them back at me days or even weeks later. I recall thinking, Wow, finally someone's seeing me.

The initial months were filled with the sort of love you believe only happens in books. He would arrive with my favorite treats after a long day, forward me songs that reminded him of me, and surprise me with tiny notes — one tucked inside my purse, another under my door. Each second with him was warm and fuzzy, like the sun on skin. I didn't even realize how fast I started to structure my schedule around him.

He wasn't only my boyfriend — he was my best friend. The guy I texted about the minutest things: a strange dream, something that tickled me, a melancholic memory that unexpectedly surfaced. He was my morning first thought and evening last prayer. I would lie on his chest, listening to the sound of his breathing, and think, This is what it must feel like to be home.

We planned. Discussed traveling together, sharing a place to live, one day possibly getting a dog. He said he'd never felt this way before — that I made him feel safe, grounded, understood. And I had faith in him. Because at the time, everything he did demonstrated it.

I felt safe with him. That's the word that keeps recurring to me: safe.

And because it was safe, I dropped my guard. I confessed to him things I had never even shared with anyone — my fears, my childhood wounds, my insecurities. He didn't judge me, he just listened, held my hand, and told me I was strong and beautiful and worthy. For the first time in my life, I really felt I had met someone who loved me for everything that I am — not just the cute, filtered version.

But what I did not know then was how simple it is to get confused between comfort and forever. I was so caught up in the way he made me feel, I did not notice how quickly I was losing fragments of myself. I quit journaling because it was "too dramatic," according to him. I distanced myself from some of my friends because they were a bad influence, he claimed. I altered my style of dress, the music I listened to, even how I talked — just to better suit his universe.

He never once told me to do these things. But love — or what I believed was love — has a tendency to make you shrink without your being told.

The transition was gradual. Barely perceptible. But before I even realized it, my mood came to rely completely on the way he treated me that day. One gentle text message could brighten my mood for days; a careless remark could destroy my week. I had bound my self-esteem to his favor, and I didn't even know it.

In retrospect, I realize that I was already shattering long before the relationship was over. I was drained from doing everything he required of me in hopes that he'd reciprocate at least half of what I invested in us. But in the moment, I was not aware. I was holding on to the good times — the memories, the emotions, the him I fell in love with.

I still thought that he was the same guy who was by my side on that balcony the night that we met.

But he wasn't.

And neither was I.