It was 7:23 Pm, and I was few minutes away from feeling all around the place as my therapist told me to finish something, I did not want to.  
 
I remember the exact evening the water in my kitchen tap was leaking and I was hearing it, and feeling anxious stopped moving. 
I reached her home and sat on the couch we once chose with laughter and hope, its cushions now feel worn out. I can only remember the time I’ve cried into it as my therapist asked me to pick my favourite cushion through every session.  
 
I began speaking  
 
“I met him yesterday at his house, wearing a hoodie and messy hair, and half sleepy, when we switched the television on, it featured our forgotten stories. I looked at both of our phones glowed like distant lanterns in the dark.” 

Love had not left the room. It had simply fallen asleep and forgot to inform me that's all.  
This was not the shipwreck I had always feared waves of argument, or doors echoing like thunder. Instead, a sinking like a river that once rushed wild and free, now moving with apology.  

“I felt myself disappearing in the stillness. I sometimes wonder if I am visible to him or am I just somebody existing in front of his eyes.” 
The mind is a deceiver in such seasons. I heard mine say that wanting more is greedy. That long-term love is supposed to fade. That maturity looks like trading passion for predictable.  

 I turned our relationship into a living landscape. Our once-wild river had become a perfectly still lake. The stillness between us became a forest fire. The silence between us became velvet fog. The small resentments I carried became polished stones, heavy in my pockets.

 
 Writing them down felt like emotional judo, using their weight against them. The metaphors became my escape hatches. We began asking questions we had forgotten how to ask. We laughed at how ridiculous our perfectly fine life had become. We remembered that love is not a static painting to be hung on the wall, but a living garden that needs patience, playfulness, and the courage to disturb the peace for the sake of something truer. 

Stagnancy, I learned, is not the opposite of love and like any sleeping thing. It is not about gestures alone, but through words, shared metaphors, late-night conversations, and the willingness to work together. 
I still slip back into stillness sometimes, due to the idea of familiarity. However, now I recognise the signs. I reach for the pen. I reach for his hand. I reach for both. The bitter truth is I have learned that the most beautiful relationships are not the ones that never stagnate.  

They are the ones brave enough, stubborn enough to have the uncomfortable conversations and actively working towards fixing it. If your relationship feels complicated amidst life transitions, reach out to iDare’s mental health experts and professionals for dedicated mental health care. 

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