Love is one of those things that feels general, e go touch everybody. But if you pay attention, you’ll see that it’s also a very fickle thing; coming and going, morphing through various forms, afflicting each sufferer differently.

This February, we will explore different experiences of romantic love in all of its iterations: the pining while seeking it, the joy of living with it, and the despair of losing it. Through honest, personal stories from real people, we’ll examine what love truly feels like. 

This is C’s story.

You might be tempted to say this reads as karma, but here you go.

I was actually in a different relationship when I started talking to this woman on Twitter. We really got along, and then she asked about someone I posted who was obviously my girlfriend, and I told her that. It upset her, so we stopped talking until she saw a video of me somehow and reached out again. As God would have it, I had broken up with my girlfriend the previous month, and so I started seeing this girl. She was a yapper, but I liked her so much. We started properly dating 3 months later, and I wish I could say it was all rosy in the garden, but even then, I could see that it wasn’t. She complained and nagged so much that it felt like she resented me. But I didn’t let go, I liked her THAT much. About 9 months in, I decided to try to leave. It worked, but I went back after a while, because she felt like home. On the good days, she was the woman I wanted to grow old with. How many good days were there now? I struggle to remember cos of how much the bad ones outnumber them. She’s the last woman who made me really FEEL, who made me choose to stay, because isn’t what love is, after all? A choice, not a feeling. It was my shortest relationship ever, but it took me the longest to get over.