Love Hurts, Yes It Does.

If anyone ever tells you that love doesn’t hurt, it’s because they’ve never had to face a final goodbye. Perhaps that person has never felt the silence that fills the space left by someone, an absence that spreads through the rooms like a shadow refusing to leave. No matter how much we try to disguise it, love is made of minor pains we learn to carry. It aches in the time that stretches when we’re alone and in the air that feels heavier when that familiar voice no longer echoes through the house.

The pain of love doesn’t lie in heated arguments or harsh words. No, it’s more subtle than that. It hides in the pauses, in what was left unsaid, in the nights when sleep won’t come, and the mind insists on revisiting what has already passed. Absence—now that’s where the actual weight is. The place at the table he used to occupy, now empty, becomes a silent abyss, a space that, no matter how many years go by, remains there, waiting for a return that will never happen.

Have you ever looked at the armchair where he used to sit? At the sound of the newspaper folding, or the bitter mate he loved to drink, now cooling beside him? It’s these little memories that suddenly grow heavy. To love is to know that one day, you will walk through the same hallways and hear the same echoes, but without that presence that gave meaning to the silence. And still, we carry on. Because that’s how it is, isn’t it? To love is also to accept the emptiness that remains.

Love has this cruelty of making us believe that it will never hurt. The pain feels like a distant idea in our daily routines and everyday conversations, almost absurd. But one day, it appears. At first, timidly—a missed presence in a gesture no longer repeated. Then, it settles in, like a feeling that, without asking permission, takes up space and refuses to leave. And then you understand: love hurts, but not in its presence. It hurts much more in its absence.

And perhaps it’s this absence that keeps us bound to love. The promise that, sooner or later, it will leave, and we’ll be left alone with what remains. And it’s then that we realize that love was never just the joy of shared moments but also the pain of knowing the end. Love isn’t only what makes us smile but also what we miss when it disappears.

If anyone tells you that love doesn’t hurt, look around you. See all the things that remain, the words that no longer have anywhere to go. And honestly, what hurts more than a love that is gone?

On October 13, 2008, my father left us. This text is a tribute to him. Sixteen years have passed, and the absence still weighs as heavy as the first day.