Love

In my life, I’ve told dozens of people that I love them. Sometimes I genuinely thought that I was in love. And other times I knew that I wasn’t. But I have only once truly loved someone.

During senior year of High School, I fell in love with my best friend. We shared similar views and goals, we laughed about the same things. But what’s more, she was there for me in my life when I needed someone. She helped me through my depression and anxiety. She made me a better person.

As the months went on, our relationship only grew stronger. We worked well together, and I shared everything with her. She was the first person that I have ever felt completely comfortable around. And to this day, there are many things about me that only she knows.

But things never work out perfectly. I had to leave to attend college at the end of the summer. We talked about the implications of this, and we decided to stay together. Nearly all of my friends told me that this was a poor choice. But I was never worried about the distance between us. We loved each other, and I believed that would be enough. I thought that I could never lose sight of that.

And so I went to to college. I made new friends, I started a new life. And for the first year, things went well. Of course we missed each other, and it was difficult being apart, but all of the pain and trouble was worth it for the time that we were together.

I remember a particular night in college when I was rambling about my relationship to my friends. I remember telling them how happy I was, and how perfect everything was going to be. I told them that I was going to marry that woman someday. And at the time, I intended to.

Loss

As I said in part 1, college was not kind to me. I didn’t realize it until too late, but it made me destructive.

I didn’t pay close enough attention to where things were going. I was distant and cold, and I didn’t share my feelings anymore. With the distance between us, communicating became difficult. We would argue about everything for no reason. The love was still there. But it was just hard to see.

And of course, she deserved better than that. At the time, I wasn’t a good person. So things ended.

We talked about it over the phone. The second the call ended, I immediately wanted to call her back and tell her I made a mistake. I wanted to tell her that I had changed and that things could be different. But at that point, I hadn’t, and they couldn’t.

Over the last few months, I’ve spent most of my time analyzing what happened. Thinking about what went wrong. I tried to think of ways to fix it, to win her back, to change.

But all that I’m left with is regret. I hate who I became, and I regret letting everything happen the way that it did. I regret not noticing things sooner. And I wish I had fought harder. I would have done anything to try to fix our relationship. But I wasn’t myself. And now it’s too late.

Moving forward is always difficult. The way I view things, it’s more than losing a person that you love and truly care about. It’s about losing a version of yourself. And worse, it’s losing a future. A future that you could have had. I was optimistic about the future that I lost. It seemed so perfect. And that’s why letting it go has been so difficult.

Admittedly, having a twenty year old tell you about heartbreak seems incredibly nearsighted. And it likely is, but that doesn’t diminish the way that I feel. Some find it comforting knowing that years from now you can look back and laugh at your past self. But I don’t find that same comfort. It doesn’t fix the disheartening loss.