Bella Imperia: The things I don’t say

I feel crazy, and I do not understand why.

It is hard to put into words what lives inside me, but I will try.

I love so deeply, so completely, that somewhere along the way I feel I have lost pieces of myself. Not because I am blind to what is happening, not because I cannot see the cracks forming beneath my feet, but because I keep waiting. Waiting for the shift. Waiting for the healing. Waiting for the day when all the hurt finally turns into something softer.

And it is not that everything is bad.

That is what makes it harder.

There are beautiful moments. There is laughter. There are days where the sun feels warm again and I am convinced that maybe we made it through the storm. There are hours where I feel weightless, suspended high in the clouds, believing everything is finally good.

Then suddenly, without warning, the ground is ripped from beneath me.

Again.

And again.

The same wound dressed in different clothes.

The same ache returning with a familiar face.

It hurts in ways I cannot explain. Everything hurts. My chest tightens until breathing feels like labor. My thoughts scatter. My heart, once stitched back together, shatters in the same places. The colors of my world dull. The lights dim. Joy becomes distant, as though it belongs to someone else entirely.

And still, I remain.

I explain away the pain.

I rationalize your choices.

I soften the sharp edges of what happened so I can survive them.

I accept your apologies and tuck them beside the others, though deep inside I know that in a few months, maybe less, we will arrive here once more—standing in the ruins of something that was supposed to be safe.

So why do I love you this much?

Why do I stay?

Is it the happiness between the storms? The years already spent? The life we built brick by brick? The memories that still glow like candles in dark rooms? Is it hope? Is it fear? Is it loyalty mistaken for endurance?

Could I leave?

No… I do not think I can.

Because I love you wholeheartedly, with every stubborn and fragile part of me. I love you with the kind of love that does not know how to stop simply because it hurts. I know you love me too—or at least I pray that you do.

I want to believe your words are true.

I want to believe that somewhere inside you is the love I keep reaching for.

Maybe you feel it deeply and simply do not know how to show it.

Maybe that is another wound all its own.

So yes, maybe I am crazy.

Crazy for enduring pain in the name of love.

Crazy for hoping each ending is the last ending.

Crazy for believing broken things can still be made whole.

But love has always made fools of us.

Love has always asked us to risk ourselves.

And perhaps the real madness is not loving too much—

Perhaps it is forgetting that I, too, deserve to be loved gently.

-Bella Imperia