Love Should Sound Less Confusing Than This
On mixed signals, emotional survival, and why clarity never goes out of style.
What falling for the wrong kind of mystery taught me about modern love.
On a cold night at the beginning of February, the unexpected happened.
I’m lying…
I had just returned to one of my worst patterns.
I was lying in bed in my Istanbul home — also known as the Museum of Meltdowns — with a notebook and pen beside me, staring at my phone as if it were a crystal ball holding the meaning of life. Well, for a hopeful (or hopeless) romantic like me, that phone could really feel that powerful, especially when I was in love.
And that was exactly the case.
I had fallen for a friend.
He was kind and intelligent, funny, and unavailable in the exact way my old wounds recognized instantly. The kind of unavailable that gave me just enough uncertainty to feel like home.
Now that it’s April — two months after that battlefield in my heart, and two months after starting the much-needed therapy that followed — I am revisiting the piece I wrote that night in February.
And all I can say is: thank God I started therapy.
Because rereading these pages reminds me how easy it is to turn waiting for one person’s text into a full-time job when you have forgotten the fact that your own life exists.
The strange part is that, back then, I thought I was doing well and that I had it all figured out.
I was getting back on Medium. I was creating more structure in my days. I believed I had figured things out. But when the backbone of your life is not yet strengthened, it is so easy to fall into the same traps of life again.
And again…
I had fallen for a friend.
Isn’t that how trouble always introduces itself?
A familiar face. Good old memories. The easy conversation. An unexpected kiss on the sofa after a night out. A few days and nights together. Enough adrenaline to awaken hope, and enough distance to keep me starving.
In other words, my nervous system was fascinated.
We spent time together. We slept together. We laughed together.
Then came the silences, the strange behavior, the delayed replies.
He came to my home once, and I cooked dinner for us. We made love, but he did not stay over. He left for his place alone, and something in me knew that something was off.
The lack of clarity.
The exact lack of clarity that can turn a grown man into a desperate French poet.
I couldn’t believe that someone I called a friend could avoid naming what had happened between us — what was happening between us — and refuse to bring the conversation into the light.
The worst part was that I was avoiding it too.
And just like that, I couldn’t help but wonder:
Why is it that some of us can survive heartbreak, betrayal, even failed engagements, yet still feel mortified by a text that doesn’t arrive?
I knew he was leaving Istanbul for a while, and I was craving clarity, craving to know where I stood.
At a certain point that night — that February night — half-heartbroken and half-humiliated, I threw myself onto the bed with a notebook and a pen, and I wrote what you’re about to read.
“What happens when you open your heart again after the worst betrayal you’ve survived?“ — I was referring to the collapse of my engagement failed - a betrayal that had left me questioning not only love, but my own ability to trust it again.
“Pain.
Unknown, dysregulating, suffocating pain.
You sit waiting for a text as if it would never come.
You try to stay hopeful.
You try to believe.
And yet… Nothing seems logical. Nothing even gives a point of meaning where you’re supposed to find air, warmth, and space to just be.
I didn’t even think I would ever fall in love again.
But one kiss, one friend, a shared moment of intimacy and passion were apparently enough to set my heart on fire, send me to the heavens, drag me back to earth, pull me through hell, and transcend me into the unknown.
I love deeply.
It’s not something I force. It just happens when the person is… right?
I have no more tears to cry.
I have no more strength to carry that burden.
I only have a heart that still somehow cares.
A heart I realized was still somehow capable of loving and craving someone.
A mind that will never rest until I am beside the person I am in love with, trying to prove I am worthy of their attention.
I’m asking myself what I’m gonna do. And it’s one of those moments that have grabbed me by the throat.
Will I ever be enough? Will I ever feel like enough?
Will I ever believe in a love that’s not chaotic and intense?
Why do I keep putting myself through so much pain?
I am waiting for a text from that boy. Something simple like:
“Do u wanna meet?”
And I’ll be there.
Not to get clarity, just for the high of the moment.
Not to have the serious talk my soul is waiting for, just to indulge into the heat of the moment.
And once I get the text, I’ll rise from the ashes like a powerful newborn phoenix until we separate, and then I’ll burst into flames just to disintegrate gracefully into ashes again, while waiting for the next message.
And the next high.
I don’t really know how to love someone while bracing myself.
I hope I’ll learn.
P.S. He texted.
How very cinematic of me, right?
After he texted, we did meet, but we didn’t have the talk.
We went out, and I hoped we would go back to his place, wake up in the morning together, and that I’d finally bring up the question — What are we now? — myself.
None of that happened. He went back to his place alone, and I walked myself home.
I don’t need to tell you how confused I felt. Most of us already know.
A few days later, I entered therapy for the first time in my life, and it was grounding. Therapy teaches you unromantic things very often, but you understand yourself and learn how to change. I’m learning so much about myself and the years of unprocessed trauma. I’m learning to recognize my emotions and register them.
I am learning to set boundaries.
And I have rarely felt happier.
Truly.
Looking back at that February version of me, I am shocked I was still even functioning at all. I was literally awaiting salvation that would come via a WhatsApp notification.
And yet I do not think that version of me was pathetic.
He was simply trying to love with tools built during years of survival mode. He was lonely.
Hopeful or hopeless.
Triggered.
But still trying and wishful to finally change. Otherwise, he would never have booked that first therapy appointment.
He was also brave enough to open his heart again after it had been broken before.
Had I known then what I know now, if I could only sit beside that boy in the Museum of Meltdowns, I would give him a pat on the shoulder and maybe, just maybe, I would whisper to him:
The message you are waiting for won’t give you oxygen.
You should be brave enough to bring up the hard conversation by yourself.
And actually, anyone who likes you should sound less confusing than this.
And dear readers, if what I shared with you could be called that was me then, then this is me now, is wanting to tell you this, in case you’re going through something similar:
If you’re waiting for someone to save your life, start by returning it to yourself. By yourself. You are enough. You are lovable. And love would never require you to shrink into waiting.
An earlier version of this essay was originally published on I Couldn’t Help But Wonder on Medium. This version is now part of The Wonder Mag archive.