A story of lovelessness.

 In the first years of my lovelessness, I experienced the unpleasant sides of this feeling very intensely. I remember moments when I would sit or lie on the floor all day long, doing nothing but staring at the ceiling and crying; how it would continue with a fit of laughter stemming from exhaustion accompanied by long self-conversations, and how it would end not with a sense of “relief” but with a sense of “postponement,” for lovelessness was persistent. The walls felt as though they didn’t let sound through, because even if I screamed, even if someone heard, no one would understand. I was surrounded by people. But what was the love they gave me? It wasn’t love. Between a school filled with the same shallow and indifferent people and a house occupied by two parents whose very existence felt uncertain, I was stuck in a cycle where there was no one I could love or be loved by. I haven’t even experienced casual touches, let alone hugs or kisses. “Love” was always an abstract thing for me. Sometimes it felt so suffocating that I experienced loneliness and powerlessness at their deepest point. Back then I was reactive, of course. But as the years went by, I didn’t become reflexive; I was “forced” to become reflexive. What I mean is, there was nothing outside myself I could take refuge in, and independence was not so much a form of power or display as it was the only option. Thinking of anything other than handling everything on my own was forbidden by my own mind, because such a thing wasn’t even possible. In this way, my years passed, and a self shaped around lovelessness formed. That is, lovelessness had turned not into a permanent pain but into a kind of wave that seized me at certain moments. More importantly, it had turned into the bricks that built me. There was a threshold where I chose power and control over love and closeness, and from that point on, I began to desire power instead of love—a power that is not necessarily external but internal, such as the power to live without love. I even forged a “record” that turns being unloved into an “endurance test,” adding each passing day to its tally as if it were an accomplisment. If I were to receive love, this magnificent chart—which counts about at least 1500 days while I am writing this—could be ruined right there, reduced to zero. And for nothing, too, as it mostly happens, because people don’t stay. And now there was only one question in my mind: “If I were to be loved, wouldn’t these bricks topple and collapse one by one?”