It always starts with the search for happiness. In the beginning you’re full of hope, you get a bit of reassurance, some encouraging signs, and then something happens.

I thought I was going to write about women, but it’s not about them. It’s about pain.

Pain is a good little drug. It’s free, you just have to do a little work for it. I don’t cut myself. I do something worse. I write. Too much. To someone important. A woman. Full of hope. And then no reply comes.

And that’s when it starts. I check the messages again, then again, then a hundred more times, and nothing comes. The pain rises, slowly, steadily, all the way up.

And something strange happens. I suffer, but at the same time I feel alive. The emptiness disappears, that kind of silence that stayed with me after my tragedy.

At that point, I don’t even need the reply anymore. I know it’s not coming. What I need is the feeling. Let it hurt. That’s still better than nothing.

I’ve broken my own heart more than once, in different ways, in different stories. Me. Not them.

And somewhere deep down I can already feel the next one coming, because pain is not accidental. It’s a habit. An easily accessible, free drug.

So what really happened? Nothing unusual. I thought she was in the same place as I was, feeling it just as strongly, just as fast. I imagined something that existed in me, not in her, and that’s why the depth became too much. Nothing special happened, I just went too fast, too deep.

I could have walked away at any point. I didn’t. I pushed it all the way. I kept going until it hurt the most. And when it finally hurt enough, I walked away.

She didn’t break me. I walked into it again and again. Pain is not accidental. It’s a choice. Not a conscious one, but it’s mine.

And the strangest part is, I knew it the whole time. There was always a point where I could have stopped. One sentence. One silence. One step back.

But I didn’t. Because it didn’t hurt enough yet.

Pain is not a solution. But it works.

And that’s what makes it dangerous.