When Love Feels Like Indifference

I don’t even know how to write this without my chest tightening, but maybe that’s the point. Maybe I need to stop holding it in and just say it: my heart is broken. Not from one explosive fight or some dramatic betrayal (but yes, those, too), but from the quiet, constant ways he shows me that my feelings don’t matter.

It’s death by a thousand cuts.

A turned-away glance when I need connection.

A silence when I need reassurance.

A shrug when I say, “that hurt me.”

And then, when I finally work up the courage to say it out loud, I don’t get an apology. I don’t get a moment of compassion. I get arguments, deflection, excuses, anything but “I’m sorry for making you feel this way.”

Each time, I feel myself shrink. My voice echoes in a room where no one is listening.

Love isn’t supposed to feel like begging for scraps of compassion. It isn’t supposed to feel like fighting for proof that my heart is worthy of care. I shouldn’t have to argue my way into being considered. I shouldn’t have to doubt whether my tears mean anything.

And yet here I am. Writing this because I can’t keep carrying the weight inside me. Writing this because I want to scream at the unfairness of it, how can someone say “I love you” and then show me over and over that my pain is invisible?

I don’t want roses, diamonds, or grand gestures. I just want to matter. I want to feel like my heart is safe in the hands I placed it in. Instead, I feel like I’m holding its shattered pieces alone, wondering why I keep trying to glue it back together for someone who doesn’t even notice it’s broken.

Maybe love isn’t supposed to be this hard. Maybe heartbreak doesn’t always come from leaving. It can come from staying. From waking up every day to the reality that you are fighting to be cherished the way you deserve.

Right now, I don’t feel strong. I don’t feel hopeful. I just feel heartbroken. And I need to say it out loud, because silence hurts worse than the pain itself.

At the end of the day, I don’t need another excuse or argument as to why breaking my heart is justified. I need the kind of love that won't ever make me beg to feel like I matter.