Love Withdrawal Symptoms

If love is the ailment, can heartbreak be the cure?

Photo by amin ramezani on Unsplash

Have you felt it too? The way love is reduced to pain, and the way pain lures us… not back to love, but to find haven in heartbreak.

These poems explore that twisted space where we'd rather stay addicted to the person who hurt us than face the cure of letting them go. Because sometimes the medicine tastes worse than the poison.

I’m more familiar with this feeling that I’d like to admit. They say misery likes company though, so I invite you to stay and read ahead.

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Drunk memories

A flashback of us,
warmly buzzed on love.
Fast forward to me,
warm feelings flushed off.

Memories flooding,
hot, drunken lovers.
History folding
sorrowful covers.

Alone, I sink in
this cold dark corner,
a shadow of us,
now I'm… just sober.

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The sweetest

Of all, you were the sweetest
most devastating heartbreak,
your wounds ripping the deepest
and the one I'd always take.

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Signed

If pain is prescribed
and so is anguish,
for falling in love…
with you.

Then I'll sign my name
on the dotted line,
and I'll fall in love…
with woe.

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Just how many times can a heart break?

The hardest part about love withdrawal isn't the pain—it's the emptiness. An emptiness so deep you want to refill your heart with love again… any love.

But here we are, still breathing, still writing, still admitting to feelings we'd rather not have. Perhaps that's the recovery we needed, isn’t it? Not full recovery, but full honesty.

Have you ever signed your own emotional contracts with pain? What bargains have you made to avoid the medicine of letting go?

Want to read more poetry on a different side of love, here’s my previous collection:

Sweet Talking Sour Nothings

To anyone else in withdrawal: your pain is real, your confusion is valid, and your eventual healing—whatever that looks like—is worth fighting for.