Let Me Die Loving You

They say love is supposed to save you. That it heals, lifts you from darkness, brings out the best in you. But they never speak of the kind of love that claws at your soul, the kind that takes more than it gives — the kind that kills slowly, quietly, like poison in your veins.

My name is Aiden, and I loved her. No — I still love her. Even though she’s gone. Even though every part of my life has been scorched by the fire she lit in my heart.

Her name was Elara.

We met under gray skies in the middle of November. She walked into the bookstore I worked at, her coat soaked, her eyes wild with the kind of storm that doesn’t come from weather. She wasn’t looking for a book — she was running from something. Maybe someone. Maybe herself. I didn’t ask. I just handed her a towel and a quiet corner to hide in.

She came back the next day. And the next. And before long, she wasn’t hiding anymore. She was blooming — slowly, like a rose forced to grow in the cracks of pavement.

She never told me everything. She gave me her smile but not her story. Her laugh but not her scars. And I, foolishly, gave her everything.

I should’ve seen the warning signs. The nights she’d disappear without a word. The bruises that weren’t from tripping. The calls she’d take in the bathroom, her voice low and shaking. But love made me blind. Or maybe I just wanted to be blind.

“I don’t deserve you,” she said one night, lying in bed with her head on my chest. “You don’t know who I really am.”

“I don’t care,” I whispered. “If loving you kills me… then let me die.”

She cried then. And I thought it was because she loved me too much.

I was wrong.

Elara was running from more than a broken past. She was tangled in something dangerous — people who owned pieces of her, debts she could never repay. She never told me the full truth. But I saw enough to understand.

I remember the night she left. No note. No goodbye. Just a half-empty closet and the echo of her name in the silence. I searched for her for weeks, begged old contacts, walked through the coldest parts of the city just hoping for a glimpse.

When I finally found her, it was in a hospital.

A drug overdose, they said. But I knew it was more than that. She wasn’t an addict — she was a hostage. Of the past, of the people she owed, of the love she thought she didn’t deserve.

She looked at me from that hospital bed with hollow eyes. “I told you… I’d destroy you.”

But she didn’t.

She only destroyed herself.

I begged her to stay. I promised I’d protect her, take her far away, anywhere. But she shook her head and gave me one last, trembling smile.

“You’re the only thing I ever wanted that was good. But good things don’t last for people like me.”

She died that night.

They called it an accident. I called it a tragedy.

And now… I live with a ghost. Every street corner echoes with her laughter. Every quiet night brings back the warmth of her hand in mine. And though the world keeps spinning, mine stopped the moment she closed her eyes.

People tell me to move on. To forget her. That love is supposed to heal, not hurt.

But they don’t understand.

I didn’t love Elara because she was broken. I loved her in spite of it. Maybe even because of it.

She was real. Raw. Unfiltered. And for a brief, burning moment, she let me in.

That kind of love doesn’t fade. It carves its name into your ribs and whispers through your blood.

So yes — loving her destroyed me.

And if I could go back… if I could choose again…

I’d still love her.

I’d still say the same words.

If loving you kills me —

Then let me die.