“I care for you. You know that, right?” he said to me as we descend down the stairs of his apartment on a lazy Autumn morning after binge watching old movies on Netflix. I replied with a smile. This doesn’t seem right, I thought to myself.

It’s been a few years since we made it official, and yet he still couldn’t deliver those words to me — the three words that make every girl feel butterflies in the pit of her stomach. Was I expecting too much? I am completely aware that actions do speak volumes, and much louder than words, but what if his actions were as shallow as his promises?

This was one of the biggest challenges I had to face in the course of almost three years we were together. To be perfectly honest, I felt like I was stuck in a loop all those years. Every night, I sit and ponder why he couldn’t admit that he loves me the way he was supposed to, or why he couldn’t permit himself to call me names that would make my heart skip a beat. This has become a nightly routine until my eyes well up with tears and end up falling asleep.

I was trapped — both mentally and emotionally — not to mention secluded from everything and everyone he loved. It wasn’t the kind of love I imagined, yet I couldn’t bring myself to let him down. I wanted to get away, badly, but something told me that if I held on tighter and kept pursuing him, he’d finally see that I was the light he needed.

But as I have come to realize, he was never in the dark. Some people are just born with no intention of ever accepting love. Yet there I was, trying to make him shine even more, boosting his ego, giving him everything when I had nothing left. I started to lose confidence in myself, and had to do what was best for me. Finally, after years of torturing myself by accepting him, I packed my bags and left, with no intention of ever looking back.

All I ever wanted was to fix him, but he ended up breaking me.