April 21, 2025
by Lana Mireles

I don’t know what love is supposed to feel like anymore. I thought it was supposed to be soft—like something you could sink into. Something that made you feel seen and safe. But lately, love has started to feel like a knife hidden in a velvet drawer. It looks beautiful from the outside, but I’m always holding my breath.

There are nights I lie next to him and I can’t sleep because I don’t know what version of him is going to wake up. The gentle one who kisses my forehead and brings me tea, or the cold, distant version who looks through me like I’m not real. Sometimes, there’s anger behind his silence—something I can’t name, something that makes me shrink into myself.

I’ve caught myself imagining impossible things. What if he snapped? What if he did something awful? What if I just disappeared and no one knew where to look? I feel ridiculous even typing that out. He’s never hit me. He’s never yelled. But there’s something… wrong. Something I feel in my gut when he watches me too long without speaking, when I catch a flicker of something in his face that makes my blood go cold.

And the worst part? I still love him. Or at least I think I do. Maybe I’m just tangled up in the idea of what we used to be. Or the version of him that says he loves me. Or the way he cries when he says he’s trying.

But what does it mean when someone says they love you, and you still feel like a thing that could be shelved, locked away, forgotten—just another object they keep because it’s theirs?

I don’t have answers. Just this feeling I can’t shake. Like I’m a guest in my own life. Like I’ve been carefully placed under glass.