Breathless

by Jennifer Niven

What makes someone stop loving you? One day there’s love; the next day there’s not. Where does it go? Something that lived and breathed like that—how can it just vanish as if it never really existed?

“Where do you think love goes when people stop loving you?

“Recycled love. Now, that’s something to think about. I don’t know. Maybe it’s even stronger because it’s forged from all these different types of love, all the parts that survived.”

dad says that it’s a rare person you can be silent with. Companionable silence, that’s what he calls it. He says most people talk too much about nothing.”

“He says there’s a difference between not talking when you’re there together and not talking when one of you is there and one of you is there but far away.”

Love complicates everything. It makes you hurt and it makes you doubt and it makes you wish you didn’t love. It makes you want to be watchful so that nothing bad or surprising ever happens. It makes you never want to love anyone again because they’ll only hurt you too.