19 Painful Reasons I Should Have Never Loved You (But Did Anyway)
I Should Have Never Loved You – A heartbreaking love story told through 19 vivid memories. Discover why sometimes love isn’t enough—and why walking away might be the most powerful choice of all.
Part 1: The First Lie
Setting: Portland, Oregon — Present Day
The rain always fell differently in Portland. It wasn’t the kind that screamed with thunder or poured with rage. It whispered. Like the kind of whisper that seeps through cracks and ruins wooden floors slowly — the kind of damage you don’t notice until it’s too late.
That’s how it began between us. Whisper-soft. Quiet damage.
I met you in November — the kind of gray, misty November that makes the world feel like it’s being held underwater. You were sitting on the back steps of the university art building, a cigarette dangling from your lips and a sketchbook stained with paint splatters resting on your knee.
I wasn’t supposed to stop. I had class. I had a life that made sense. I didn’t need a beautiful disaster with haunted eyes and knuckles bruised from fighting things no one else could see.
But I stopped anyway.
“Do you always smoke in no-smoking zones?” I asked.
You looked up. Your smile was slow, almost lazy. “Only when I need the sky to pay attention to me.”
That was your first lie. You didn’t care about the sky. You only cared when no one else was watching.
I laughed because I didn’t know better.
And you offered me a seat beside you.
I should have walked away. That was reason one I should have never loved you — you wore destruction like it was denim. Effortless. I should have known better than to fall in love with a storm and expect it not to flood me.
But I sat beside you anyway.
You smelled like turpentine and danger.
The Wound You Never Named
You never talked about your past. You had a scar above your left eyebrow and a tattoo on your ribcage that read stay wild. Your hands always shook before you spoke in public, and you always turned away when someone tried to compliment your work.
But you painted like someone who had seen heaven and hell and knew which was worse.
You told me your name was Asher, and that sometimes the world got too loud.
So I gave you silence.
You told me you hated crowded rooms.
So I invited you to quiet ones.
You told me you were a mess.
And I smiled like that was a compliment.
That was reason two I should have never loved you — I mistook warning signs for poetry. You never asked me to save you, but I tried anyway.
You once said, “I break everything I touch.”
I should have believed you.
The First Time You Let Me In
It was raining the night you kissed me. Not the whisper-rain, but the kind that made the streets shine silver. We were soaked, standing under the awning outside my apartment, your hands trembling as you tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.
“I’m not good for you,” you whispered.
I didn’t know love could be an apology and a confession in the same breath.
That was reason three I should have never loved you — I mistook your guilt for honesty. But guilt isn’t love. Guilt is a prison made of all the things we regret but never change.
I said, “Then don’t hurt me.”
You nodded, once. But you didn’t promise.
And I kissed you anyway.
What They Didn’t See (I should have never loved you)
To everyone else, you were charming. Quiet. Talented. A little aloof, but never cruel.
Only I knew the way your hands trembled at 2 a.m. Only I knew how you slept with a knife under your pillow. Only I saw the drawings you made when you thought no one was watching — the ones with wolves and monsters and a boy always running.
Only I heard you scream in your sleep. Only I wiped the blood from your knuckles when you punched walls instead of feelings.
That was reason four I should have never loved you — because I made your silence sacred. I turned your violence into metaphor. I let your trauma excuse your patterns.
And that night you said, “You’re the only one who makes me feel safe,” I should have run.
But I stayed.
The Disappearing Act
You started disappearing in February.
First, it was texts you forgot to answer. Then missed dinners. Then nights when I didn’t know where you were.
You’d come back at 4 a.m., smell like paint thinner and whiskey, and say, “Sorry. I got lost in it.”
In what, Asher? The art? The pain? The oblivion?
That was reason five I should have never loved you — I let absence become a form of intimacy. I learned to love the moments when you returned instead of questioning why you kept leaving.
You said, “You’re the only thing that makes me want to stay.”
But staying and loving aren’t the same.
The First Time You Forgot My Birthday
I waited at the cafe for two hours. Your gift sat beside my coffee, wrapped in brown paper with your initials sketched across it.
You never came.
No call.
No excuse.
The next morning, you showed up at my apartment with roses and an apology I could smell from the hallway.
“I’m a mess,” you said. “I’ll never be enough for you.”
That was reason six I should have never loved you — because I kept forgiving instead of remembering. I kept waiting for the version of you I met on that rainy November afternoon to come back.
But he never existed.
I Forgot Who I Was
By March, I didn’t recognize the girl in the mirror.
She wore less color. She smiled less often. She spent most nights curled up beside a boy who cried in his sleep but never cried in front of her.
I stopped painting. I stopped writing. I stopped laughing.
That was reason seven I should have never loved you — because in loving you, I stopped loving myself.
And you never noticed.
The Beginning of the End (I should have never loved you)
It was a Thursday when I found the painting.
Hidden behind your dresser. A canvas you never meant me to see.
It was me. Sitting on the university steps, my eyes hollow, my smile gone. A version of me you had painted — not as I was, but as you had made me.
There was no color. Just black, gray, and something red smeared where my heart should be.
That was reason eight I should have never loved you — because your love didn’t celebrate me. It consumed me.
And when I left that night, I didn’t say goodbye.
Because you wouldn’t have chased me.
Part 2: The Ghost of What We Were (I Should Have Never Loved You)
The Art of Apologizing Without Meaning It
You didn’t come after me.
Not that night.
Not the next day.
But a week later, I found a letter on my doorstep. It was barely a paragraph:
“You were never supposed to matter this much. I thought I could handle soft things. I was wrong. — A.”
That was reason nine I should have never loved you — you believed breaking me was inevitable. You thought pain was a price I had to pay for being close to you.
No, Asher.
Pain wasn’t love.
Pain was the consequence of trusting someone who didn’t want to be trusted.
And you? You apologized like someone who knew I’d forgive you anyway.
The Relapse
I let you back in.
Of course I did.
Because you showed up at my door looking like you hadn’t slept in a week, with those eyes that always said what your mouth couldn’t.
You whispered, “I miss us.”
And I forgot all the reasons I was supposed to be angry.
That was reason ten I should have never loved you — you made me addicted to almosts. Almost happy. Almost safe. Almost loved.
You kissed me like a promise and touched me like a habit.
And I mistook both for home.
The Diary I Wasn’t Supposed to Read
You fell asleep one night with your journal open beside you. I tried not to look.
But your handwriting was like a magnet.
“I wish I knew how to love her. I wish I believed I deserved her.”
“Maybe I ruin people so they’ll leave first. I’m tired of people pretending I’m worth saving.”
That was reason eleven I should have never loved you — because I wanted to prove you wrong more than I wanted to protect my heart.
But love shouldn’t be a rescue mission.
I wasn’t your therapist. I wasn’t your salvation.
I was just a girl who wanted someone to choose her — and you never really did.
The Things You Didn’t Say
You never said “I love you.”
Not once.
You said things like:
- “You’re too good for me.”
- “I’m scared I’ll hurt you.”
- “You deserve someone better.”
That was reason twelve I should have never loved you — I fell for the way you held me like I was precious, and ignored the way you spoke like I was disposable.
You built a world where I was temporary.
And still, I kept buying furniture for a future you had no plans to live in.
The Goodbye You Didn’t Hear
The last time I saw you, you were painting. Your studio was a mess — half-finished canvases, cigarette butts in coffee mugs, the windows fogged with winter breath.
I stood in your doorway for five full minutes before you even looked up.
“Hey,” you said, voice soft. “You okay?”
I nodded.
But I wasn’t.
That was reason thirteen I should have never loved you — because I had to leave in order to feel seen. You didn’t notice I was slipping away until I was already gone.
I placed your hoodie on the chair. The one I always wore when your silence got too loud.
Then I turned and walked away.
You didn’t stop me.
Not then.
Not ever.
The Weight You Left Behind
I spent weeks trying to forget you.
But how do you unlove someone who never really let you love them?
Your name stayed under my tongue like a burn.
Your voice echoed through every poem I tried to write without you.
I deleted your number. Blocked your Instagram. Donated the sweater you left in my closet.
But that was reason fourteen I should have never loved you — because even when you were gone, you still haunted everything.
You became a ghost I had to learn not to miss.
When I Finally Told Someone
I sat with my best friend, Rina, on her apartment floor, three wine glasses deep into honesty. She listened without interrupting, her hand a steady weight on my shoulder.
When I finished, she said, “You weren’t in love. You were in war. And you kept thinking the next ceasefire would be the last.”
That was reason fifteen I should have never loved you — because love should never feel like surviving someone.
It should never feel like trying not to drown every time they leave the room.
The Message You Sent Months Later
It came out of nowhere.
“I hope you’re doing well. I saw your painting in the gallery downtown. You looked… happy. I’m glad.”
I stared at the message for an hour.
Then deleted it.
That was reason sixteen I should have never loved you — because you only reached out when you knew I was healing.
And I refused to let you reopen wounds you never stayed to bandage.
What I Know Now
I don’t hate you.
I hate the way I bent myself into someone else’s definition of worthy.
I hate that I kept trying to be the exception to your brokenness.
I hate that I romanticized your inability to love me.
But mostly?
I hate that even now, a part of me still hopes you’re okay.
And that’s reason seventeen I should have never loved you — because I still want the best for the person who gave me the worst.
Part 3: The Last Lie I Believed (I Should Have Never Loved You)
The Night I Almost Called You
It was raining. The kind that makes the world blur at the edges.
I stood outside the art gallery that had just accepted my solo exhibit — something I had dreamt of for years. But all I could think about was you.
You were the first person I wanted to tell.
Not my parents. Not my friends. You.
Because for a long time, my joy didn’t feel real until it had passed through you.
I unlocked my phone. Found your number. Hovered over the call button.
And that was reason eighteen I should have never loved you — because even when you did nothing to earn it, you were still my first instinct.
Still the name my happiness whispered to.
And that’s not love.
That’s muscle memory.
The Poem You Never Read
I wrote a hundred versions of you.
In charcoal and watercolor.
In prose and silence.
But one poem stayed folded in my wallet for months.
You called me brave for loving you,
but you never stayed long enough to see me bleed.
I named stars after the parts of you I missed,
until constellations looked like apologies.
It ended with:
If you come back, I’ll be gone this time.
For real. For good.
I promise.
And that was reason nineteen I should have never loved you — because I kept writing endings to a story that only I was reading.
You weren’t the villain.
You weren’t even the hero.
You were the absence.
And I deserved more than an echo.
The Closure I Gave Myself
You never came back.
And I never waited again.
I filled my studio with light and new canvases.
I fell in love with coffee shops that didn’t smell like your cologne.
I let someone touch me and didn’t flinch.
They laughed when I told them I once believed love had to be earned.
“Love isn’t a prize,” they said. “It’s a place. You either feel safe in it, or you don’t.”
That’s when I knew…
You were a test I passed by walking away.
And maybe that’s the final reason I should have never loved you — because you were never really mine to begin with.
Epilogue: When Love Finds You After the War
Years later, I saw you again.
You were standing in the corner of a bookstore, thumbing through a dog-eared poetry collection. You looked smaller somehow. Softer.
We locked eyes.
And nothing inside me broke.
No ache.
No flinch.
No longing.
Just peace.
You smiled. I nodded. That was it.
I walked out into the sun, holding the hand of the person who showed me what real love looks like — soft, consistent, and terrifyingly easy.
Love that doesn’t make you forget who you are.
But reminds you.
Every single day.
The End of “reasons I should have never loved you”
Get more complete book now—exclusively on Gumroad!
Post Comment