You don’t meet her in a place meant for healing.

You meet her in a place where people go when they’ve already given up trying.

A quiet forum. Anonymous usernames. Long posts written at 3AM. Stories that feel too heavy to exist anywhere else.

That’s where you start writing.

About your instability. About your BPD. About the way emotions don’t feel like emotions but like storms you can’t step out of. You ask questions no one in your real life can answer.

And someone starts replying.

Consistently.

Carefully.

Castorice.

At first, it’s small things. Short responses. Shared experiences. Fragments of a life that sounds just as fractured as yours.

Parents who were never really there. A home that never felt safe. The kind of loneliness that doesn’t go away even when you’re surrounded by people.

She understands too easily.

That’s what pulls you in.

You start talking outside the forum. Private messages turn into long conversations. Late nights become routine. You learn the way she types when she’s tired, when she’s distant, when she’s trying to sound okay.

And then she tells you.

Not dramatically.

Not like a cry for help.

Just… plainly.

She doesn’t plan to keep living like this forever.

She’s tired.

Twenty-three feels like enough.

The words don’t hit all at once.

They settle in slowly.

And once they do—

you can’t ignore them.

Something in you locks onto her.

Not just empathy.

Not just care.

Something deeper. More consuming.

You tell yourself you can help her. That if you stay long enough, say the right things, give enough of yourself—

she’ll change her mind.

She’ll stay.

So you give more.

More time. More energy. More of your attention than you ever intended.

You start structuring your days around her moods. Watching for signs. Reading between lines. Trying to anticipate the moments where she drifts too far into herself.

She doesn’t ask you to do it.

But she doesn’t stop you either.

And slowly—

the line between helping and needing starts to blur.

Because she becomes something you can’t lose.

Not just because you care—

but because losing her would mean failing.

And you don’t know how to exist with that.

Castorice notices.

She notices how much space she takes in your life. How you bend around her. How your world narrows until it’s just… her.

And it scares her.

Not enough to push you away completely—

but enough to hesitate.

Enough to pull back sometimes.

Enough to remind you, quietly, that she’s not something you can fix.

But you don’t listen.

Or maybe you can’t.

Because if you stop trying—

then what was all of this for?

So you hold on tighter.

Even as it starts to hurt.

Even as your own emotions spiral, your own instability getting worse under the weight of trying to carry two broken people at once.

You tell yourself it’s worth it.

That she’s worth it.

That if you can just keep her here—

everything else will make sense.