Falling in love is both utterly beautiful and utterly heartbreaking. Love has been both kind and harsh to me, but I am still a firm believer in its existence. My first love taught me that.
I fell in love slowly, but I couldn’t tell you when it started to shape me. I started by loving certain things about him. His eyes. The way he laughed when I said something silly, as I so often did. The way he gazed at me all the time. The taste of his lips on a cold, cold morning, better than any coffee. Yes, love shaped me. It opened me to a world I never realized was out there. And the colors of that world were so heartbreakingly gorgeous that I wish they were still mine to paint with.
He started it. I had no idea that he even felt that way – any way, really – about me. But he did, and the honesty with which he said so still brings tears to my eyes today.
I trusted him more than anyone else. And somehow I won his trust as well. As February nights faded into March mornings, he let me see pieces of his past, pieces that fit together to create the boy I couldn’t quite believe loved me. His ex-girlfriend, how she had hurt him. His family, their quirks and habits. His roommates, their history and bonding experiences. And I loved him even more for it. For his honesty, for his trust. I slipped him titbits of my life as well, experiences that had shaped me in childhood, that continue to shape me today. We spent hours talking about everything and nothing. Hours that I will never regret. Words were both the cornerstone and the bane of our relationship. We could talk about politics, history, music, dance, people, films – oh how we talked! But we had our silences too. And the silences are far more precious to me now when I look back at us.
It was a semester of promise and a summer of hope.
The week before I left for study abroad, he and I spent four hours in his car. The rain misted the windows and our tears fogged the world. He asked me what “impractical romantic wishes” I had, and I asked for just one. A kiss in the rain – just like the one in The Notebook. A kiss of promise and hope. And he gave it to me, sweeping my breath away and leaving me smiling and drenched. We kissed in the rain for minutes; it seemed like hours. It tasted like…forever.
There are some people in your life who make it bearable, and he is still my best hello and my worst, my absolute worst, goodbye.
Our summer was our taste of long-distance relationships. His experience with them was bad, and mine was nonexistent. There were times when he was unsure, when he tried to pull away. And those were the times when I held on harder. Because I believed we could make it through. We Skyped every day, sometimes twice a day, and he was the first thought I had in the morning and the last thought before I fell asleep. I would wake up some mornings with my pillow wet, his name on my lips. He would call me, saying he missed me. I started having nightmares of losing him. He whispered that he felt we were fading. Were we?
I didn’t think so. I still don’t think so. But I could not save our relationship alone. When I returned from abroad, there was a text waiting for me. He said he was unsure, that he no longer loved me the way he used to, that he had to let go.
He started it, and he ended it. It was all in his hands. He caught me.
He wasn’t supposed to let me go.
My world was a nightmare, from which I had no escape. It is worse to lose someone when you loved them as much as I loved him. He was my first love. I, the studious girl, the one who never dates, had fallen for him – a guy who understood me the way no one else quite did. After he sent me that text, I wondered if any guy would really think I was worth crossing every obstacle for. It seemed impossible. I cried constantly, lost weight in a haze of barely eating, walked around with a hooded expression in my eyes. It was harder because I couldn’t tell my parents or family about him. I didn’t think they would approve of me wanting to date him. It isn’t what girls do where I’m from, you see.
He promised he would handle my heart with care. But he was careless, in the end. He said he wanted to stay friends, that he would always love me unconditionally. What does that mean? I always thought we loved each other unconditionally before. Then what changed?
I cannot make him love me if he does not. But I do not stop loving so easily. I am not one to try and force myself to let go of things that once made me happy. He changed my life. And I hope, I really hope, I changed his. Because he said I saved his life once, and I truly believe he meant it.
We used to write each other letters. Sometimes I think we were a Nicholas Sparks’ couple. All the ingredients were there. I still find myself searching for our happy ending. Where did it go?
I will always be grateful for having had the chance to love him. We are still friends; I am still his closest friend and he is one of mine. But phone conversations are difficult for me, even now, four months later. He seems distant, even though we speak so comfortably about things we wouldn’t tell other people. And I want to tell him to just be himself, to talk to me like we always did. These are the moments when I most long for the past. I open my mouth to tell him how much it hurts me that he sounds so distant, but the words do not leave my lips. Because I still love him so much that I cannot risk losing him with ill-placed words. With sentiments that are too strong for conversations on a telephone.
Have I moved on? In a sense, yes. I no longer wake up from sleep screaming his name. But I will not forget him, or how he made me feel. Nor do I want to. Why should I?
I tried to mend him, but maybe I didn’t quite succeed. I thought my love would be enough to heal the past wounds he bore. But some things are not so easily healed. We cannot fix every wrong in the world, but for him, I would have tried time and time again. Perhaps we would have lasted had it not been so soon after his last relationship. Maybe he would have tried harder then, or at least tamed his fears. Because he did try to save us.
He just didn’t try enough.
But I am glad I loved him, and that he loved me once. Love has been both cruel and kind to me, but I am all the richer for it. And so I thank him for the journey, for the memories.
And even for the tears.