What if I wasn't done loving you

Like most, her first love ended with heartbreak. She didn’t know the word heartbreak literally meant that it felt like your heart was breaking. Then again, there had to be a reason why people call it that. For a week she cried. She constantly looked at their photos, trying to capture those snippets where they both looked so happy. She realized that she didn’t take as many videos as she’d hoped. There weren’t as many clips where he could hear his voice, hear his laughter. She was scared of the fact that she might never see it with her eyes, that she’d never hear him again. Which was most likely true. He wasn’t a part of her life anymore. 

Love is beautiful, they said. And with him she truly felt it. She thought that it was the most beautiful thing that she could experience. And she was so glad that he was the one who made her learn it. But no matter how many times they told her about the end and the aftermath, she didn’t take it to heart. Once she was with him, she couldn’t believe it. What did they mean by saying that he wouldn’t be in her life anymore? He became a day-to-day. It became an instinct. Everything she did, everything she felt, she would tell him. He was the one she shared everything with. So when that stopped and when he turned away to walk from what they had, she didn’t know what to do. Who does she text good morning? Who does she call when she feels like crying? Who does she laugh with when she sees something silly? 

She wondered when it would get better. Everyone says it gets better. But every single day, every minute that passed without him in her life, she hurt. She felt like she was drowning in her own sorrows. And she desperately wanted him to come and pull her out of it. It was too late. She severed their line one too many times. And the strong rope that he wanted to put together for them thinned until there was none left for him to hold on to. He started walking away. He was exhausted. He felt contempt for everything he gave to her. He gave her so much and found clarity when he left.

She didn’t.

She spent their whole relationship worried about working out the problems of her life. It was their relationship, but the problems in her life that brought them to a halt every other month. That’s why she kept giving up. She wasn’t strong enough to defeat the monsters of her life, and she didn’t want to ruin him with it too. But she didn’t know then that it was already hurting him. She was so focused on the pain she was going through to protect their love in her own way that he was right there beside her, feeling the same cuts and pains that she fell hopelessly into. 

Now she was lost. She didn’t know what to do. All this time, she was lost. She never knew what to do. She desperately wanted to reach back out to him, but it wouldn’t change anything. Her problems were still very much alive. She just wondered how she could pull herself out of this dread all by herself. Was she strong enough? Was she enough?

She looked up at the pictures of them she still had on her wall. He had already gotten rid of all of them. That was his way of moving on. Everyone advised her to do the same. That she needed to block him, learn how to do things on her own again, and find the joy in life by herself. But how do you learn how to laugh again by yourself when all you can remember of genuine happiness was with him?

She wondered if it was the right person, wrong time. Or if they were just not meant to be at all. If she was ever worthy of love. Maybe her problems run so deep that it's best if she kept others out of it. But a part of her hoped that he would be the right person at the right time. She hoped that she wasn't as messed up as she was. And nobody would know how tangled up she was inside. Her facade never broke. Well, that was until everything came crumbling down after he left. Now, everyone knew.

She would cry randomly on the train. She'd call her friends for hours as they tried hard to understand what she was saying, with her spewing words through her tears. She asked them if they thought he was already over her. If he was already moving on. If he was hurting as much as she did. And as much as they wanted, they didn't have an answer for her. The one person who had the answers was the one that she couldn't call. So all she could do was sit there with her questions. Wondering what would happen next. Wondering if they'd ever cross paths again in life. Wondering if this was what was meant to be for them. That this ending was the only way. It was too late. But she still wondered.

Once a chapter ends, there's no going back. You can't take back the words on the page, and the events that happened in that chapter stay. You can go back and read it, but you can't rewrite it. She knew that. She kept telling herself that. But what her head knew and what her heart wanted were two vastly different things.

She wrote on a Post-it note something she only hoped would be what she thought in the future. That there would come a day when she finally realized that she didn't love him anymore. Yet, when she saw the word love, she'd still think of him. And maybe when that time comes, she'd hurt less. When she thinks of him, she hopes that there'd be more joy in what happened than her sorrows of what could have been.

She wasn't done loving him. But their love came to an end. And now she was left with her what-ifs. What if this wasn't the end for them, but it didn't matter at all? It was her life, her choice, but not the outcome she wanted to end up with. So where does that leave her?