Love or Attachment?

I rarely called attachment what it actually was when I was in the middle of it. I called it love. I called it intensity, depth, or passion. But real love does not feel like a panic attacks. Real love does not keep my hands shaking every time my phone screen stays dark for too long. It started innocently enough, a sudden, magnetic pull toward someone who slowly became the focal point of my entire day. But somewhere along the line, appreciation turned into addiction. Attachment crept in quietly, and before I even realized I had crossed the line, my world shrank down to a single person.

I knew I was in deep when my morning mood was determined by whether their name appeared on my screen before I got out of bed. Every notification became a brief spike of dopamine; every silence, a slow-burning agony. I started reading meanings into things that weren't there, a missing emoji, a slightly longer delay between replies, a subtle shift in tone. I analyzed text messages like they mattered so much, searching for proof that they still cared, or evidence that they were slipping away. Then came the jealousy, raw, ugly, and exhausting. It wasn't just about other people, it was about their focus. I found myself wanting them to crave me with the same terrifying intensity I craved them. I wanted them to feel consumed. I wanted them to hurt a little, just so I knew it mattered. When my happiness was entirely outsourced to their unpredictable actions, peace became an impossibility. By the time I realized I wasn't in love, but rather trapped in a web of obsession and emotional dependence, it felt too late.

So I tried to retrace my steps. I tried to pull back, to pull my heart back into my chest where it belonged. But detaching from an emotional addiction felt like physical withdrawal. The moment I forced myself not to reach out, my chest ached with a physical, heavy pain. Detachment didn't bring immediate relief, it just brought a sharper kind of pain. That was when my late night prayers began. Through endless nights of crying into my pillow, I asked for a way out. I didn't even pray for love anymore, I prayed for anesthesia, memory loss or anything that could take away my pain. “God, fix this. God, make my heart cold. Make me numb. Make me stop caring.” I pleaded for an end to the hyper-fixation, but for weeks, it felt like my prayers fell into a void. The pain stayed. The obsession lingered.

And then, one day arrived, I woke up, and my first instinct wasn't to reach for my phone. I went through my afternoon, and I realized hours had passed without their name crossing my mind. I received a late text, and my heart didn't jump. The anxiety was gone. The weight in my chest had lifted. I felt lighter, grounded, and impossibly at peace. It was in that quiet, fragile moment of clarity that I realized my old prayers were finally answered, just not on my timeline. And as I sat in the quiet beauty of my restored mind, my prayer softly changed to the only one that truly mattered: God, please don’t take away my peace.