Obsession Consumes You

Love is an obsession that rarely makes sense. The things we love most often defy logic, and yet they define us, cling to us long after they’re gone. I’ve been turning this over in my mind lately, trying to unravel why some memories feel like they’re burned into the fabric of who we are while others dissolve into nothingness. It’s never the sensible, practical things that stay with us. It’s the irrational loves, the chaotic obsessions, the things that broke us and somehow still mattered more than anything else.

I stumbled upon a Theo Von podcast recently, and he was talking about his past drug use. When he spoke about cocaine, it wasn’t the detached confession of someone performing regret for the sake of appearances. There was a reverence in his tone, almost a tenderness, as if he was describing an old friend who had once saved his life and then ruined it in equal measure. His words had a strange poetry to them, an ache that was impossible to ignore. It was clear he loved it, even if it destroyed him. Maybe that sounds absurd. How can someone love a drug, a substance that ruins you? But that’s what obsession does. It doesn’t care if the object of your affection is worthy or not. It only cares that it consumed you.

Hearing him talk about it, I started thinking about the nature of missing something, about the way loss burrows into you and refuses to let go. You can only ever miss something if you truly loved it, and not just in the superficial way we use the word love to describe things we enjoy. I’m talking about the kind of love that becomes a part of you, that intertwines with your sense of self so deeply that losing it feels like losing a limb. When you lose something like that, it doesn’t disappear. It lingers, always just beneath the surface, waiting to remind you of what’s no longer there.

It’s not the kind of thing you can bury or forget. It stays with you, popping into your head at the most inconvenient times. A scent, a song, a fleeting moment of déjà vu. It doesn’t take much to drag it all back. Sometimes, it feels like the more you try to let it go, the stronger its grip becomes. And it doesn’t matter if it was a person, an idea, or even a thing. If it mattered to you, if it truly defined you in some way, it sticks.

I think about how people demand proof of love. Maybe it’s because they want to be missed in that way, to know they left a mark on someone’s life that time can’t erase. Women especially seem to crave this. It’s why they ask questions like “What do you like about me?” On the surface, it’s a simple question, but underneath it, there’s something more desperate. They’re asking to be adored in a way that can’t be faked, in a way that doesn’t need justification. And when a man struggles to answer, when he stumbles over his words or gives a half-hearted response, they know. They might not admit it, but they know. If he can’t see her in that irrational, all consuming way, then there is no true desire.

Love, obsession, whatever you want to call it, doesn’t require an explanation. It doesn’t ask for validation because it’s self-evident. You feel it in your gut, in the way the world shifts when it’s in your focus, in the way everything else seems dull by comparison. And when it’s gone, it leaves behind a hollow space that nothing else can fill. You can try to replace it, to move on, but the memory lingers.

When you love something deeply, you don’t just lose it when it’s gone, you lose a part of yourself. It’s why the reminders hurt so much, why the random flashbacks hit with such force. They’re not just memories of what you had. They’re reminders of who you were when you had it. Losing it is a kind of death, and yet you keep living, carrying the weight of it with you. The rest of life goes on, but it’s quieter now.

That’s the price of obsession. To care so deeply is to risk losing pieces of yourself along the way. The rest of the world becomes a dull hum that fades into the background. But what you loved, that stays. Forever. It doesn’t matter if it was irrational, destructive, or even painful. It mattered, and that’s enough to make it unforgettable.

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