I Wanted It to Be You

A raw exploration of love, betrayal, addiction, and survival—navigating heartbreak with suspicion of broken honesty and brutal self-truth

This feeling sounds like:

As a writer, these moments are pure gold—raw, jagged, spilling from me like blood from a fresh wound. Usually, I let them slip by, waiting for the ache to dull into something manageable, but today, I’m seizing it—writing as it surges through me like a storm.

Today, my mind is a traitor. It despises me. It’s here, yet a universe away—so fragmented I can no longer tell where I end and the dissociation begins. I sit, staring into nothingness, time slipping through my fingers. Two minutes to midnight. Another day swallowed whole by absence. What have I done today? I genuinely don't know.

I’m in a fluid state, untethered. Somewhere between here and nowhere. Something small—something that should have been simple—has hurled me into a spiral so consuming it terrifies me. A few hours ago, I was stunned by the realisation: I have slammed 6.8g in less than 48 hours. I pause, letting the enormity of that land.
I’m out of control. Dissociated to a depth I’ve never before touched. I try to ground myself, and only then, as I drop fully into my body for the first time in weeks, do I feel it—I am high AF, obliterated, lambasted beyond recognition. The world spins; my mind screams. Even in the dead of night, where the world outside is silent, inside me, it is deafening—a cacophony I must quiet before it devours me whole.

Sinking deeper, I finally feel the full force of my disintegration: utterly destroyed. Seconds ago, I thought about having another shot, but my heartbeat is already irregular, my vision blurry. Best I don’t.

Anyone who sees me now would know. My skin is dry, inflamed, screaming under the lightest touch. Bruises bloom black, blue and purple on my inner elbows, desperate to conceal broken veins. Panda-eyed and puffy, mascara-streaked, framing a hollow exhaustion I can no longer hide. I am wreckage. And I am ashamed.

To the world, I would be just another junkie, another delusional addict clutching at denial. I don’t even bristle at the label anymore; I entertain the possibility that it may be true. But beneath the chaos, I feel something shifting—edges softening like a tide beginning to pull back.

Healing demands brutal awareness and acceptance. Radical acceptance, I have waxed.
People ask, “What is healing? What is necessary? What does it look like?”
Here’s my truth: healing is a journey without a destination.
There will not be a moment when I can proclaim myself “healed,” wrapped up in a neat bow, safe from future pain. Life compounds itself—layer upon layer of heartbreak, betrayal, grief.

To say we have "healed” trauma often simply means we have buried it deep enough that devastation feels like a polite nod to a passing stranger. That’s not healing. That’s dissociation, denial dressed in self-help slogans.

I'm done with that word. It lies.

Horrible things happen. They mark us. They shift the very way we inhabit the world.
My soul-sister’s suicide a decade ago carved a void in me that nothing will ever fill. It is devastating. It is unchangeable.

Healing is not erasing it. Healing, for me, is learning to carry that weight without letting it crush me. It is sitting with the gut-punch of loss and whispering, “This is agony,” without spiralling into chaos.

Healing is when awareness outpaces the spiral.

Admitting I am drowning is the first step towards breathing again.

This spiral did not ambush me. As mentioned in my previous essay, I saw the red flags with Atlantic. I ignored them. I dove headfirst into the fire, intoxicated by the intensity.
This connection is unlike anything I have ever known—electric, visceral, all-consuming. For a month, it built relentlessly. Four weeks ago, when my son went to stay with my father, Atlantic and I lived on FaceTime. We spent entire days and nights together. Phone in a waterproof pouch while we showered. Trips to Walmart to give me an authentic “American experience.” Me dragging him to the beach. Sleeping with cameras on, his breathing lulled me to sleep.

His birthday is coming up. I wanted to get him the perfect gift. But to send something to California costs a fortune. So I got him a customised novelty, designed by yours truly, off Amazon and had it shipped to him directly. It’s from Amazon, of course it’s lame! That was just intended as the backup plan & just for a giggle; I wanted to show him that I see him, that I put thought into it, from the materials to the nuances and suggestive themes in the design, down to the colour; it’s all him.
I then reached out to a local photographer who is well-known in film. (It is worth noting that I loathe photos. I absolutely, irrevokably, despise being photographed.) The photog agreed to do an artistic, BDSM boudoir photoshoot with me. Again, I went online and purchased looks for the shoot that I believe are perfectly suited to Atlantic’s taste profile - it had to be perfect!

We discussed getting tattoos, creating designs for each other. (How romantic? And brave!) He wanted the German flag woven into mine; that’s a quiet claim on my skin! {{READ BETWEEN THE LINES: he wanted to plant his flag on me}}.
He promised honesty, consistently reminding me what safety feels like, assuring me that nothing I do could change his perception of me, that I was the perfect one, physically, emotionally, intellectually; slipping "always” and “forever” into casual sentences like secret vows. He said “I love you” a hundred ways without using the words.
We spoke about previous relationships, where we screwed up, how those relationships changed us and we agreed, time and time again, that dishonesty is a deal breaker. That lies, infidelity, and secrets cut deeper than any authenticity could, regardless of circumstance.

And then came the fuckening.

The sudden chaos shredded me. And I see it now, painfully clearly:
This is trauma. This is attachment rupture.

Attachment theory explains why I am unravelling.
I lean anxiously, wired from childhood inconsistencies to crave closeness and simultaneously fear abandonment. Atlantic’s constant presence soothed my nervous system. His sudden withdrawal—standing me up three times, then giving me a last-minute heads up that he would be away for a week and claiming there would be no signal, followed by the sudden tightening of privacy settings, was already making me uneasy. Then, when I noticed in my feed, on several platforms, that he was still active online, it triggered a primal terror in me.
My body reads it as mortal danger, floods me with cortisol, and drives me to chase, to numb, to survive.
The 6.8g slammed in 48 hours?
It wasn’t a rebellion.
It was survival.

Trauma locks me into a cycle: seek closeness → fear loss → spiral when loss arrives.
Atlantic’s words and actions became irreconcilable. He says I am everything; his actions make me feel like an afterthought. And so I must trust what he does.
I did not imagine this bond—we created it together.

But this version of him, the one standing me up, without explaining, disappearing into silence, falls painfully short of the man I fell for.
My heart clings to the echo of the man who once showed up.
My soul knows the echo is not enough.

This is heartbreaking.
This is betrayal—the betrayal of a truth we shared.
I was transparent from the start. I named my needs: honesty, openness, and no games. I made space for the messiness of long-distance relating. I said if he ever met someone else, all I would ask was honesty.
I gave him freedom.
He mirrored me. Or perhaps he only pretended to.

Now, his silence and secrecy are hurtful and disorienting. Because we rejected this way of being. We promised we were not those people.

So why would he choose the path that cuts deeper?
Why would he hurt me, when he knows the truth would not have?
Why lie? Why hide?
Why shatter something that asked only for honesty?

I don’t think I’ll ever have these answers. I knew when we said goodbye on our last phone call that I wouldn’t hear from him again. How did I know?

Not my first rodeo, baby.
I’ve been Lorem Ipsum most of my life.
They never really care.

Never before have I given concepts like marriage and white picket fences any consideration. He got me to imagine forever as a viable, obtainable thing - and a desirable one at that! Then again, he was my “never before guy”; my first experience of a huge variety of things.

Never before has a male left me feeling so desolate.
Empty.

Alone.

Worthless.

Like the ultimate fool.

So, please excuse me while I slip into something a little more comfortable - like a coma.

⛦

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Song Credits:
PERFORMING ARTISTS-AVRALIZE-Performer-Severin Sailer-Vocals-Philipp Tenberken-Electric Guitar-Valentin Noack-Electric Bass Guitar-Bastian Gölz-Drums-COMPOSITION & LYRICS-Severin Sailer-Composer-Philipp Tenberken-Composer-Valentin Noack-Composer-Bastian Gölz-Composer-Manuel Renner -Composer PRODUCTION & ENGINEERING- Manuel Renner -Producer

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Thank you for taking the time to read Matters of Substance. These pieces are like love letters—intimate reflections where I bare my soul, sharing raw details of my journey through trauma, drugs, addiction, and healing. As a South African, I cannot set up Substack subscriptions, and I want to keep it free for those who cannot afford the info.

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