PROLOGUE: Before the Story

Some stories don’t start with fireworks. They start with the memories that echo in the walls long before you understand what they mean.

Mine began in two very different houses.

In one house, love sounded like laughter. Soft footsteps. A kiss on the cheek. The gentle clinking of my grandparents’ coffee mugs in the morning.

My grandparents had the kind of marriage that made you believe in forever. Thirty years of choosing each other—not just with words, but with little, deliberate acts that counted more.

My grandpa brought my grandma flowers just because. She cooked his favorite meals without asking. He teased her. She rolled her eyes but smiled every time.

I used to sit on their carpet and watch them as if they were some rare kind of magic—two people who didn’t just love each other, but liked each other. Loved being around each other.

Their love was quiet, steady, and warm. It was a sanctuary that made a house feel full without ever raising a voice.

When my grandma died in my eighth-grade year, something in me cracked. Not just from losing her but from losing the model of love that made the world feel safe.

After she was gone, I realized how rare that kind of love was. And how deeply I wanted it.

Because the other house I grew up in… didn’t sound like that.

My parents loved each other, yes—but they loved each other loudly. Explosively. Dangerously. Their love filled the house like weather: storms rolling in without warning, thunder you could hear through every closed door.

Arguments didn’t stay in the living room—they traveled. They crawled under my door. They rose up through the vents. They shook the pictures on the walls.

I grew up hearing yelling—the kind that hits the air sharp. My mom’s voice breaking, rising, falling. My dad’s voice louder, angrier, talking over her. The sound of two people trying to hold on and tear apart in the same breath.

I’d sit still on my bed, heart pounding, waiting for the moment I always knew was coming: the door slam. The one that made the whole house shake. The one that made me flinch every time.

There was no hiding from their love. It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t patient. It wasn’t steady.

It was loud. Chaotic. Unpredictable.

My dad’s cheating didn’t just break promises—it broke peace. It brought lies. Other children. It brought the shame of secret phone calls and the sting of constant, conditional forgiveness.

Nights where my mom tried to keep herself together until the bedroom door closed and she didn’t have to anymore.

I watched her lose herself trying to keep something whole that was never meant to be.

And that’s where I learned something I should’ve never learned so young:

Love could look beautiful from far away and still hurt like hell up close.

Between those two houses—between quiet love and loud love—I learned to crave one while surviving the other.

I learned to romanticize the softness I saw with my grandparents and normalize the chaos I saw between my parents.

So when I started falling in love myself, I didn’t know it yet, but I wasn’t just choosing boys—I was choosing the versions of love I had been taught.

I wanted the devotion my grandparents shared. But I tolerated the storms my mother weathered. Because that’s what I grew up seeing. That’s what I thought love required—endurance. Sacrifice. Patience through pain.

I didn’t know then that my heart would meet three different loves that would break, test, and rebuild me in ways I couldn’t imagine. That I would spend years confusing chaos for passion and silence for safety.

I didn’t know that every lesson from those two houses would follow me into every relationship I touched.

Before I learned what love truly was, I had to learn what it wasn’t. This is the story of that journey—of the girl who loved fiercely, hurt completely, healed slowly, and fought her way back to the only love that ever mattered: the love for herself.