I don’t feel the same way anymore…

When that vivid high saturated moments stop. When I don’t notice you as strongly. What happens next?

remember the first time I saw you. Not the party—I mean the moment. The actual one. The bass was doing that thing where it lives inside your ribs, and the lights were cutting everyone into red and blue fragments, and I had my camera up—half observing, half hiding, you know how I do. And then you were just there. You were leaning against the wall near the stairs, looking at your phone with this expression like you were somewhere else entirely. Everyone around you was chasing something—attention, oblivion, the next drink—and you were just there. Anchored. I took a photo of you that night. You didn't notice. I still have it. The light caught your hands. That's what I saw first. Your hands.

Before you, I thought I knew what I was doing. I had it mapped out—school, art, observation. I was good at watching people, bad at letting them watch me back. I'd dated, technically, but nothing that went anywhere. Nothing that made me want to give up the control I'd built my whole personality around. My parents raised me well—stable home, good values, enough freedom to roam but enough structure to feel safe. But something in me always stood adjacent. I didn't fit their traditions, not quite. I didn't fit the CalArts scene, not quite. I was in between, all the time. In liminal spaces. Doorways. Alleys. The edge of crowds. That's where I lived. That's where I thought I'd always live.

Then you.

The first months with you were— God, I don't even know how to describe it. It was like someone turned the saturation up on everything. Your face was a drug. Literally. I'd see you across the room and my body would react before my brain caught up—heart rate up, pupils dilated, this ridiculous, involuntary smile I couldn't control. I'd hear your keys in the door and my whole nervous system would just light up. Every single time. Do you understand? Every. Single. Time. You'd walk in and I'd feel this rush, this electric current that made everything vivid. I'd look at you and see color where other people saw gray. Your voice. Your stupid jokes. The way you'd look at me like I was the most interesting