"I miss you."
The three words that I have been dying to hear since the day you left; three words that would have made my life so much better.
It actually kills me now to know that is how you feel. When you were telling me there was no chance while I was begging you to try again, you seemed to sure of it. Almost as if you could read into the future and were providing me with a dose of reality that I desperately wanted to change.
January 2020 was by far the hardest month I ever encountered. The amount of heartbreak that I felt was something that I could never imagine and would not wish upon my worst enemy. At the time, you were my best friend, the one I told everything to, the person who I felt most safe with. With just a few words and many tears, you were gone. My safe place disappeared. In its place, pieces of my broken heart and a river of tears that would constantly flood into my everyday life. Yet, there I was... still wanting, hoping, praying that you would change your mind and come back to me. I begged for you to love me again, but to no avail.
I believe that there are 3 soulmates you're meant to find in your life: 1) the love that looks right, 2) the hard love, and 3) the love that lasts. I swore you were the love that lasts, but you were the hard love and it killed me to realize this.
1) The Love That Looks Right
If you have ever read a fairytale, then you know about the love that looks right; it is idealistic, but unfortunately, not always the case. This love appeals to society and your family; you walk into this love thinking they are you end goal and it doesn't matter if it doesn't feel quite right. You will find yourself having to turn down your personal truths, who you are, what you believe, to make this love work, because deep down, we think this is what love is supposed to be. Eventually, you will realize you deserve more. Eventually, you will grow apart.
2) The Hard Love
This person is the one that teaches you something, lessons about who we are and who we were meant to be. How often we get love, how to receive it, and even give it. This love is painful and tiresome. You are willing to work as hard as you need to try and make things work, but there is so much manipulation (emotionally and physically) that eventually you just give up because the heartbreak would hurt less than being with them. This relationship is unhealthy, unbalanced, and even narcissistic with high levels of drama that keeps us addicted to the storyline; an emotional rollercoaster of extreme highs and lows, only staying through the lows because you love the highs.
3) The Love That Lasts
You will never see this love coming, it comes out of nowhere. When you come together with this love, it just fits. There are never any ideal expectations of how the other should act and there is never pressure to become someone we are not; we are accepted for who we already are, and what we can become, which shakes us to our core. This love is strong and not something we ever would have envisioned. It doesn't play by the rulebook we came up with and shows us that love doesn't have to be the way we always thought it should be. This love never gives up until it is finally yours; repeatedly, until in a relationship with this person, they come back to you again, and again, and again.
Some people will argue that we never really find these three loves in our lifetime, and to some extent, that is true. Maybe we can't move on from the love that looks right, or never learn the lessons that we are supposed to learn. Perhaps we need to understand what love isn't, to know what it is. Maybe, just maybe, you're one of the lucky ones who found the love that lasts first and love passionately until your dying breath. Anyone who make it to their third love, no matter if they found them first or went through the first two to get there, they're the lucky ones.
While we were together, I thought without a doubt that you were the love that lasts. As it turns out, you were just the hard love... right? Can your hard love turn into the love that lasts? What if I learned my lesson(s) and moved on, only to realize that I have changed into a better version of me to love you once again, but better, more gentle than before. Could you be my love that lasts? Or is this another lesson, a test that I need to pass, but am eager to explore? I genuinely believe that I learned my lesson(s) and have been able to turn my life around. I got stable because I wanted to, because I knew that I was hurting the people I loved by pretending that I was ok when I wasn't. I learned how to communicate and step back when needed to gather my thoughts and come back to the discussion later. I learned that, sometimes, it has to hurt before it gets better.
I learned so much from our relationship that I cannot even begin to explain it all. If asked to put all my lessons on paper from our relationship, I probably couldn't simply because there were so many. With these lessons and experiences I have had without you, I have grown into the most amazing version of me. I wish you were here to see it. I wish you would be able to understand. The fact of the matter is, unfortunately, you might not be able to understand the new me or see the change because the old me, the one that caused so much grief and trouble is forever burned into your mind and memory. I never meant to hurt you. I never meant for you to be the hard love, because I loved you so much at a time that was so difficult for me. I gave everything I had at the time, but times have changed.
I am genuinely happy, like, so happy that I never could have believed this much happy could happen.
I am genuinely happy, like, so happy that I never could have believed this.
Yet, here I am, thinking about the past. Wondering...
Do you still have my hair tie in your car? Did you keep the photos, or did you finally get rid of them? Do you still think about the times we shared that were good? Bad? Did you learn anything from our relationship? Do you ever go to Panera and think about me and the faces I would make with bread bowls? Do you miss me in your passenger seat? Do you miss helping me clean man fish tank? Hearing about my day? Do you miss knowing what meds I was taking and what dosages? Do you miss knowing me, the REAL me?
Fuck it, I miss you, too.