And so, the discuss goes
Love often begins as a softness, a shade of pink that feels almost delicate in its promises. It blushes with possibility, whispering that forever is not only possible but already here. Yet with time, if not nurtured, that pink shifts. It deepens into purple, not the royal hue of triumph but the shade of bruises, the kind you carry on your heart where no one else can see.
Many lovers stay single not because they cannot love but because they have learned to recognize when pink has darkened, when hearts are no longer being built but scarred.
It begins subtly. A woman speaks at dinner, pouring herself into the story of her day, her voice tracing the need for connection. He does not look up from his phone. His silence is not neutral; it is a dismissal. These small refusals of presence carve loneliness even in the company of two. This is nonchalance, and though it seems harmless, it tells the other that their existence can be overlooked.
At times, the wound carries the weight of centuries. A husband laughs when his wife suggests she could handle the finances. “You would not understand,” he says, though her entire career proves otherwise. His laughter is not simple humor, it is a cage passed down through generations, where misogyny keeps her brilliance outside the walls of their shared home.
When the silenced try to speak, rage often follows. A woman asks not once, but ten times, for her partner to show up, to be present, to change. Her voice rises not from madness but from grief on fire. Female rage is the echo of being unheard for too long, of trying to resist invisibility before it consumes her. Yet even here, her fire is judged instead of understood.
Faults live on both sides. She too learns the subtle art of manipulation. “You are the only one who can make me happy,” she says, tying storms to his body with the rope of guilt. Her tenderness is a mask for control, and though she speaks of love, she feeds on his captivity.
He plays his part as well, cloaking selfishness in the language of self-awareness. “This is just who I am,” he says after every quarrel, as though naming the wound absolves him of healing it. His apologies appear only when her tears threaten his comfort, not because remorse has truly taken root. Narcissism becomes a shield, not an admission.
When these cycles repeat, avoidance becomes the silent destroyer. Arguments end not in resolution but in closed doors, both scrolling through glowing screens, watching strangers dance and laugh while their own laughter grows rare. The silence feels like peace, but it is not. It is oxygen leaking out of the relationship, until both choke on the quiet.
What remains is the bruise, the purple truth that many lovers would rather not face. That love can be tender, but also cruel. That hearts can be built, but also scarred. That not all partners arrive to nurture, some arrive only to drain.
So the single ones remain, not because they are incapable of love, but because they have seen how easily it is abandoned, how quickly someone else’s truth can erase the images of joy they once carried.
Some turn to books, where paper lovers still listen, still hold hands through storms, still believe in forever. The ink on those pages may bruise less than the hands they once trusted. For in stories, the pink does not sour. In stories, purple is only the color of velvet nights, not a record of pain.
The lesson becomes this: if you wish to love, examine yourself. Ask whether your presence heals or dismisses, whether your laughter builds or cages, whether your silence comforts or suffocates. Love is not meant to bruise. It is meant to be the careful tending of hearts, where pink remains light and alive, not darkened by neglect.
When the final word is spoken, when silence finally settles like dawn after storm, love reveals its truest lesson. That the heart, despite being bruised, still remembers light. That pink, though once darkened, can turn again — not to the purple of pain, but to the gentle sunrise of renewal. For every ending carries within it the possibility of a beginning, and in that quiet glow, love waits to be tended differently, tenderly, as if it were the very breath of tomorrow.
The curling of a heart that knows pain but wills to change it is where true love begins. For in that will lies a promise — not that life will always be pink, not that purple will never return, but that the heart, once curled, opens again. It learns that scars do not mean the end of love, only the texture of it. Love, then, is not the escape from pain but the courage to stand in it until the morning comes, until the light rests on the skin once more.
-Nnenna
Nene's Corner 