The Love I Almost Ran From

There was a time when love for me felt chaotic. It was messy, toxic, full of stabbing words and endless paragraphs of explanation that never seemed to be enough. I thought that's how it was supposed to be. If it wasn’t hard, if it didn’t leave me gasping for breath, then it wasn’t real. And I really believed that. For years, I let myself drown in that belief, wading through heartbreak like it was a rite of passage—as if suffering proved the depth of my love.

And then you came along.

You didn’t demand anything from me. You didn’t rush in like the rest, eager to fix or claim me. You just stood there, offering something I didn’t even recognize at first. Peace.

My God, I didn’t know what to do with it. It was foreign, almost suspicious. I had spent so long fighting for love, screaming for it, bleeding for it, that when you handed it to me quietly—without conditions, without a script—I panicked. I grabbed at it like something that might disappear if I didn’t hold on tight enough. And when it didn’t, when you didn’t, I recoiled. Because how could something so calm be so loud? How could something so chill do the thing I had been searching for all along?

I almost pushed you away, you know?

Not because you were bad for me. Not because I didn’t want you. But because I had been conditioned to equate love with exhaustion, passion with pain. I almost convinced myself it was too good to be true. But you stayed. You didn’t push. You didn’t demand. You didn’t chase. You just waited.

And that’s what undid me.

You waited until I learned how to stop running. Until I realized that love isn’t supposed to suffocate, that peace is not the absence of passion but the presence of safety. Until I stopped reaching for the chaos I had mistaken for connection.

I used to think that the best kind of love was the one that left bruises—on the skin, and the heart. I thought that real love had to be tested by fire, that it had to push me to the edge of myself, leave me breathless, clawing for air. I thought love had to be fought for, screamed for, and survived.

But you changed everything.

You didn’t show up with promises carved into poetic lies. You didn’t sell me a fantasy or demand I prove my worth. You just were. And that scared the hell out of me. Because if love wasn’t pain, if it wasn’t struggle, then what was I supposed to do with it?

It took me time—too much time—to realize that love shouldn’t leave me restless. That it shouldn’t keep me up at night wondering if I was enough. That it shouldn’t demand my suffering as proof of its existence.

I used to believe in love that burned. Love that left scars. Love that came with conditions and ultimatums and the constant ache of never feeling settled. But now, I know better. Love is not supposed to be a battlefield. It is not supposed to drain me until there is nothing left to give.

I fought peace like it was an enemy. I mistook security for boredom, mistook kindness for weakness. I had spent so much of my life preparing for love to be taken from me that I didn’t know what to do when it stayed. When you stayed.

I don’t know when it happened exactly—when I stopped flinching at softness, when I stopped expecting love to be a war I had to win. But one day, I woke up and realized that peace no longer scared me. That your presence no longer felt like a question waiting to be answered.

I think love is often confused with intensity. With passion that burns too hot, too fast, and leaves nothing but ash in its wake. But real love? Real love is gentle. It is kind. It does not demand. It does not destroy.

And I see that now.

Now I get it.

The peace you brought me wasn’t a facade. It wasn’t the quiet before the storm. It was real. It was steady. It was love in its purest form. You weren’t just someone I wanted—you were the proof of something I didn’t even realize I was missing. And for the first time, I didn’t have to beg for it.

Love,
Neta.