From that moment on...
Time felt like it had stopped.
It was as if the child inside his heart died right there in front of her—
Died holding onto the words that never had the chance to reach her.
He came back with empty eyes...
He wasn’t crying, he wasn’t screaming,
But deep inside, a voice was shattering a million times per second.
He began to feel ashamed...
Ashamed of feeling, ashamed of hoping,
Ashamed of dreaming that he could be seen.
And from that moment, everything inside him began to go cold.
Love became an empty word,
His smile turned into a rehearsed gesture, no longer coming from the heart.
It was like he put on a new mask... one that hid all the pain.
People around him started to notice a change,
But no one got close enough to ask why.
People slowly drifted away,
Because his expressions grew heavy, and his words became broken.
He could no longer share joy or respond to laughter with laughter.
He went quiet, listening more than speaking,
And when he did speak... his words sounded defeated before they even began.
A growing feeling inside told him he wasn’t wanted.
When someone smiled at him, he doubted it.
When someone came close, he got scared.
He felt like there was always a distance between him and the world...
A distance filled with nothing but cold, silence, and loneliness.
When he sat among people, he felt like a stranger,
As if their laughter wasn’t meant for him, and life was moving on without him.
They’d talk about love... dreams... the future,
While deep inside, he’d wonder: “Why am I even here?”
He began to experience symptoms he didn’t understand at the time:
Sudden panic attacks,
Trembling hands whenever someone looked at him too long,
Avoidance of any real connection with anyone,
Restless sleep, dreams full of people leaving him,
And every time he tried to open up,
His mind would remember the mockery he saw in her eyes,
And feel everything inside him locking up like a steel door.
He saw the world racing ahead of him,
While he stood still, tied by invisible chains of his own pain.
On long, lonely nights,
He’d hug himself in bed...
Not for warmth, but to remind himself he was still human.
He started losing trust in himself,
Believing he wasn’t enough for anyone—
Not even for himself.
He kept a distance from anyone he cared about,
Afraid he might hurt them, or they might hurt him.
When someone said something kind,
His first thought was:
“They’re joking... they can’t be serious.”
And with time...
He began to wish he could disappear.
Not die, not completely,
Just vanish...
To exist without being felt,
And without feeling anyone.
As the years passed,
He began to change... not all at once,
But piece by piece, like time was carving new features into him.
He no longer saw life the same way.
To him, it became nothing more than a battlefield.
He started seeking stories filled with real pain.
He read about wars, soldiers who left without goodbye,
About leaders whose lives were nothing but slow, frozen death,
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About characters who lost everything... and kept going like they were made of stone.
He felt close to them,
Not because they won...
But because they had lost themselves long before he did.
He felt he belonged to the sadness in their eyes,
To eyes that saw the end from the first step,
To the sound of gunfire that was kinder than a betraying word,
To the cold hearts of fighters who died inside long before their bodies did.
He felt like one of them...
Walking through the world carrying a war no one else could see.
His mindset shifted,
He started to see the world as chaos...
Full of people chasing small dreams,
And he... stood outside the game,
Knowing love and peace weren’t for everyone—
At least, not for him.
He created wider distances between himself and others,
Stopped expecting anything from anyone,
Didn’t believe in smiles easily,
Never opened his door to those who knocked.
And with time,
He grew used to loneliness.
He talked to himself instead of to others.
Rarely, he found someone like him,
Someone carrying the same wound,
Someone who understood that some hearts don’t heal... they just learn to live broken.
And if he met someone like that,
He’d feel something strange inside—
Something close to safety... but terrified.
Terrified to get close,
Even more terrified of losing again.
Time moved slowly,
And life around him kept pulling away moment by moment, without giving him anything to hold onto.
But one day,
Something strange happened...
He saw her—someone new entered his life.
She was his complete opposite.
Her smile was full of life, as if she could light up the world with a glance.
And she spoke like she knew everything,
But in a gentle, innocent way, as if she carried no wounds.
And he, in his dark heart, tried to understand...
Is this a new chance? Am I ready again?
Or will I stay frozen, afraid of every new step?
As days passed,
He started to feel a recurring long night inside him.
When she got close, he felt something strange,
Not love like before, no...
But something like the urge to understand, to explore...
And at the same time, a terrible fear of pain returning.
He tried to look at her, but his eyes always darted away.
He couldn’t give her more than half—
He couldn’t give her a heart that had become nothing but a memory.
And one day...
She asked him directly:
"Why can’t you love like before?
Why can’t you express yourself?"
At that moment, he felt something rush through his veins.
He didn’t know how to answer,
He had no clear reply,
But deep inside, a voice whispered:
“You’re not the same person anymore...
You’re not someone who can be loved completely.”
He smiled softly,
And said: “I’m not ready for love.”
But somewhere deep inside, far from his words,
He was saying: “I’m scared.
Scared of myself,
Scared of the pain that lives within me.”
And he kept trying to run...
But every time she tried to get closer,
He felt his heart tremble—
Not because he felt nothing,
But because he didn’t know how to face himself in this story again.
