This is a love story*

(*Because it’s not the kind they write poems about. Unless the poem ends with “…and then she cried into a 40.”)

Let’s start this off right: I was emotionally stable, spiritually fulfilled and making great choices.

Obviously kidding.

I wasn’t in a good place. I was in a sidewalk-adjacent breakdown, the kind that looks like chasing closure but smells distinctly like cheap liquor and unprocessed grief. And yet – into that chaos stepped someone who didn’t run. Who didn’t laugh. Who asked, gently, if I was doing okay.

This wasn’t one of those toxic, screaming matches in public kind of loves. He didn’t hurt me. If anything, he offered kindness in the wreckage. A moment of calm in the storm I was still pretending wasn’t swallowing me. Out of all my exes, he was the best. Which, sure, isn’t saying much – but it still means something. He wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I kept trying to build a future on top of my collapse before picking up any sort of mop or broom.

Because that’s what sobriety gives you: hindsight in HD. The chance to replay all your “love stories” and realize how many of them started with a breakdown – and how often you called that fate.

But it felt like love. Because when you’re in pieces, anyone who helps you gather a few of them feels like a soulmate.

And that’s the thing about sobriety. You don’t just stop drinking – you start remembering. All of it. The late-night texts, the breakdowns disguised as passion, the mornings you swore you’d get your life together. The way you kept thinking, Maybe this time, I won’t ruin it. Maybe this time, he’ll stay.

So yes, this is a love story. One with heart and havoc. One where no one was the villain. Just two people – one broken, one barefoot – who met on a lawn, tried to hold the pieces together and couldn’t.

But for a little while, we tried. And that counts for something – welcome to the mess. Bring your own closure.