I've sat across from someone feeling exactly what you're feeling right now. You look in the mirror and a stranger looks back. There’s a hollowness in the eyes, a tightness around the mouth that isn’t yours. Your own voice sounds foreign, a faint echo in the cavern of your chest where a roar used to live. You’ve spent months, maybe years, contorting your soul into a shape that was pleasing to someone else, and now that they’re gone, the shape remains. A monument to a love that consumed you. You mistake this emptiness for a flaw in your being. You think you are broken, that you have lost some essential part of yourself. This is a lie. Let’s name this for what it is. Not a partnership. An erasure. It began subtly. The small surrenders. You stopped listening to the music that made you feel alive because they called it noise. You traded your fiery debates for a tight-lipped peace. You learned to swallow your “no” until it became a permanent lump in your throat. You became a master of prediction, an expert in their moods, their needs, their unspoken demands. Your own nervous system became a satellite dish, perpetually