At seventeen, I believed love was supposed to be brave, defiant, and unwavering, the kind of force that could carry two people through anything if they held on tightly enough. I believed it because I had never known anything else. My high school boyfriend had been my first real love, the person who made the world feel quieter and safer just by sitting beside me. We weren’t dramatic or flashy. We didn’t write poetry to each other or sneak out at night. We studied together, shared headphones on long bus rides, and talked about the future in soft, hopeful voices.

We planned colleges, careers, apartments with crooked bookshelves and tiny kitchens. We assumed life would open its doors for us simply because we loved each other sincerely. Then, a week before Christmas, everything collapsed. I was on my bedroom floor, wrapping gifts and humming along to a radio, when the phone rang. His mother’s voice was broken, frantic, full of words that didn’t seem real: accident, truck, spinal cord, can’t feel his legs. The hospital smelled like disinfectant and fear. Machines beeped steadily, as if trying to reassure everyone that time was still moving. He lay there with tubes and wires, eyes open, trying to smile for me.