Without love, life's a party that won't invite us

When two are in love, the days stream by in the skies, colourful ribbons marking the days of excitement, of life. Time flies - you're flying. It's so easy, so smooth. You don't keep track of the dates by their numbers - the memories of the time spent together are the date markers.

Nonreciprocal love - that's like a decade of starvation with little frequent breaks of ecstasy in between. The hours of staring into your phone, the times you two are in a room together and you wish he'd come over and say something - there are the times of pain and heartbreak. But there are also the times where a simple text or a tiny compliment would set your heart soaring. It keeps you happy and dreamy for a while - before you realise he still has his heart set on someone else anyway. Time is like a long, red line marked with pain, with huge dots of bright light and glitter marking the little events that made you swoon - the events that helps you make it through the weeks.

Like sneaking into a random school together at 9pm, or holding hands, or a special look he gives you - just you - across the lecture hall.

When you don't like anyone at all, your heart's supposed to feel freer, isn't it? Yet there's this gaping hole in my soul and it feels like it's sucking everything in. The hole's like a dead weight, if that makes sense. In the usual happiness and laughter of the day, there are the sudden jolts of realisation that there's nobody I'm living for. And nobody's thinking of me in that way, either.

Once, I could go to bed feeling ugly but I would tell myself it was alright; in the eyes of a certain someone, I meant the whole world. But then we parted and after months of tears, I realised I wasn't special to anybody anymore.

Now, as a deep-thinking INFP who yearns for something more to live for, there are times I wonder how I've managed to make it through more than a year without... even a kiss, without the reassurance of someone who loved me. There are times I imagine love going on in my head - but my partner is a stranger I don't recognise. I don't know him.

Maybe one day I'll meet him and realise he's the one who's been in my dreams.