It feels confusing before it feels painful.
Then it feels lonely in ways that are hard to explain.

It feels like talking into silence and slowly doubting your own voice.
Like loving deeply while standing next to someone who is emotionally absent — present in body, absent in soul.

You start asking:

• Am I too sensitive?
• Am I asking for too much?
• Why do I feel alone when I’m not alone?

Over time it becomes exhausting. You carry the emotional weight for two people. You grieve a relationship that never fully existed, while still living inside it.

And the hardest part?
Realising that nothing you did caused the emptiness — and nothing you could do would ever fill it.

Spending half a life with someone who feels nothing doesn’t mean you felt nothing.
It means you felt everything.

And walking away from that isn’t failure — it’s survival, truth, and self-respect.