This week, I lost someone in a manner more unsettling than death. They simply slipped from my heart, leaving nothing but debris and a sickening residue of what once gave me joy. 

If there’d been death, I could reconcile their absence – I could direct my pain and grief. However, I didn’t lose a person, I lost the placebo-effect of their “love”; the false sense of safety and empty pleasures. 

I lost the part of myself that believed.