on madness

i’ve heard it said there’s a fine line between love and obsession. that they often blur, overlap, bleed into one another—a venn diagram of desire and delusion. and right there in the center, where the circles converge, is madness.

the madness of falling in love.

it’s strange, isn’t it? the falling. into love, into madness. a single step, and the ground gives out. a hormonal circus cartwheeling through your veins—dopamine hits, serotonin spikes, flares of oxytocin. a skin-to-soul fever dream.

but the most striking part? unadulterated devotion. a willingness—an eagerness—to redraw every line in the sand once thought to be etched in stone. i would do the very things i hate: sit through a mind-numbing movie, choke down flavorless food, spend hours listening to a podcast mentioned in passing. i would become unrecognizable to myself. all to be near you, to impress you, to love you a little more.

when i was younger, i used to love the honeymoon phase. the breathless urgency, the falling into someone’s gravity, the all-consuming need for them to become your center of mass. but somewhere along the way, that thrill lost its luster. i chalked it up to growing older, reality settling in, the inevitable erosion of novelty.

but i don’t think that’s entirely true.

the feelings are still there. the raw materials haven’t vanished—they’ve just been bricked over. a disappointment. a heartbreak. a moment of vulnerability met with indifference. that’s all it takes. and then comes the hum—soft, steady, almost imperceptible. a numbness like a television left on in the background, a fog that never fully lifts.

you learn to build walls, install fail-safes, dig moats. doing everything you can just to survive, endure, stay upright. then, years later, you’re told—by therapists, self-help books, well-meaning friends—that the key to healing is dismantling it all. tear down the walls, disarm the fail-safes, lower the drawbridge: surrender.

there’s this beautiful quote by paulo coelho: “maybe the journey isn’t about becoming anything. maybe it’s about unbecoming everything that isn’t really you, so that you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.”

but what if who i was meant to be…is just some frightened little boy? one who loves too hard, feels too much, shatters too easily. is that a self worth reclaiming?

i don’t know.

what i know is this: the whisper of your name opens me, then empties me; the blue in your eyes carries both harbor and storm; the caress of your hand, a balm and bruise.

i’m slipping again, softening in places i swore i’d sealed shut.

falling—into the familiar arms of madness.