The screen glows in the dark, a silent witness to the midnight ritual. Another scroll through their life, another twist of the knife. It’s the phantom limb of your relationship, still aching, still demanding your attention. You’re checking their social media, a digital flagellant whipping yourself with images of their new, seemingly happy life. You’re re-reading old text messages, panning for gold in a river that has long run dry. You’re having imaginary conversations in the shower, finally saying all the things you should have said, could have said, but never did. Your thumb hovers over their name in your contacts, a weapon of self-destruction you can’t quite bring yourself to put down. This isn’t just a memory; it’s a haunting. A ghost that sleeps in your bed and sits across from you at the dinner table. It’s a constant, churning loop of “what ifs” and “if onlys” that drains the color from your world, leaving everything in shades of their absence. Let’s call this what it is. This is not love. This is a trauma response. This is your mind, in a desperate and misguided attempt to protect you from the raw, untamed agony of loss, creating a problem