This Love

One of these days will be the last time I’ll feel this love for you. This love that I have been carrying ever since the day we decided to separate. You know, I don’t think about this as often as I used to. Apparently, I might not have moved on but it is working. This distance, this silence. It is working and a part of that love, a large part, unfortunately, is gone. I think of it as kind of relieving but also upsetting. I never wanted this to go. The thought that this day is not so far makes me crumble. I might have promised you that it would never fade away, this love, but what matters more is that I promised myself. The day I confessed to you, I still remember, I was staring at the phone screen with my eyes wide open at 11:37 on a cold winter night. My heart was in my hand, no wait, in your hand actually, and I was praying to the lord that he would make you keep it. I had wanted you for so long and you were finally one word away from being mine. A yes. That was all that was between me and you. Not this world, not my past, not one thing. It wasn’t easy you know. As much as I was hoping you would say yes, I could not help but create a scenario where you would say no. A world where I would have confessed my love for you and you would have turned it down, and we would have been required to survive each other’s presence in person for 3 more months to follow before we could finally move ahead to college and get rid of that bond. Thank God you said yes. Love is a complicated feeling. We see them displaying it, talking about it, writing about it, and fighting for it, and yet about 99% of the times we fail to understand what it is. I think, love is giving yourself to someone in such a senseless manner that includes you giving away your greatest treasure as a human, your emotions, for someone else to look after. And however scary that may sound, it’s one of the best feelings in the world. It’s breathtakingly soulful to see someone want you. And it’s equally soul-crushing to see them take all that love back. I remember you once told me that sometimes you would stand against the wall with your forehead touching it, imagining that it was me. I still believe it to be one of the most loving things ever said to me. But back to the point. This fading love. One of these days I was reading all the paragraphs you used to write me back then. I would read them and question myself the same thing over and over again, how can something THIS amazing, die? I am and will forever be unable to answer this question. But just because you don’t have an answer to something does not make it untrue. Like this situation, our situation. I asked the lord for you and he gave that to me and took it back. I mean, I didn’t know it worked like that up there. There were instances when you would sit across me, eating or talking or doing anything and I would just watch you and think to myself that how, how can someone be like this? You shone so brightly it hurt my eyes. I used to get intimidated by your smile thinking that it would make people want to steal you from me. I can’t say I was wrong because look at us now. I don’t know if it was the people but it was something. Something I will never understand but will have to because maybe it makes sense to you. Meanwhile, I’ll sit here and watch this love fade away, this love that took years to form and years to come to shape. This love that speaks volumes because I can bet they talk about us every time we are not at the table. This love that makes it so hard for us to tell each other that we miss each other because we are worried to mess with our heads. What great love must that be right? I wish I could carve it out of my heart and keep it in a glass bottle by my table, looking at it every morning and thinking to myself that the best days of my life are behind me but not being upset about it. Incredible love. We go together. We used to go together.