[From the Diaries]
Who am I to grieve love? What have I ever truly known about it?
Sure, I’ve written endlessly about being in love and falling apart in love. But have I ever really loved? Do I even know what it means to love and to be loved?
I don’t think I do.
The man I once called the love of my life, the one I genuinely believe would have given me the entire world, I kicked him so hard I’m surprised he never kicked back. We did not have ugly fights. No screaming. No name calling. We just, hesitantly moved on.
And the final breakup elated me.
It was the only breakup that ever did. I knew he deserved better than the way I was treating him. Even though it hurt to let go, even though I was losing so much, I had to. I think a part of me always believed we would find our way back to each other once we were more grown.
The part I forgot was that he was always grown. I was the one who needed to catch up.
And with the way I treated him, why would he ever wait? He didn’t.
That entire relationship was me questioning whether I had ever really loved him at all. I mistook adoration for convenience because I was a girl who had never been treated right. And he treated me right. There was nothing he would not have done for me. That is not nostalgia talking. That is fact.
I was young. Messy. Stupid. Too young to see the bigger picture.
It has been over six years. He has moved on. God knows, he probably has a family of his own. The one he would have had with me. Actually, he would have. If I had been patient. A little more mature. A little less broken.
All I had to do was grow up. But I wanted to have fun.
Do I miss him? Not like that. It is more the realization that if I could have found love, happiness, and loyalty in one person, it would have been him.
Loyalty.
I say that word carefully now because I have never felt as betrayed as I do today. Not once. Not twice. Over and over again. And now I understand the value of it. Loyalty feels like a prized possession I casually threw away a long time ago.
I am too fabulous to be in the wrong relationship and let a man treat me like this again and again. I really am. This is not arrogance. I have worked too hard on myself to throw it all away.
So what is stopping me?
Everything any woman my age would consider.
But do I really want to gamble the biggest decision of my life? Is the man I love, the one I carry around like candy and armor, someone who will constantly embarrass me?
Lord knows I have allowed it so many times already. And he continues to do so. Is that love? Does he even love me?
He cannot. You do not do these things to someone you love.
I know that because, for a brief moment, I was madly in love with this very man. And he ruined my love for him by never truly loving me at all. I gave him more than enough chances. And in every single one, he let me down tremendously.
But maybe what truly terrifies me is this: for the longest time, I believed I was incapable of real love.
The only real love I can remember is the one I felt at nineteen. I gave him everything. When it ended, it took years to recover. And once I did, it felt like I had never loved him at all.
And then, years later, I felt this soul-consuming love. Brief. Intense. Maybe synthetic. But it felt real.
I wonder where I went wrong. I loved this man. I wanted a life with him. But his honesty did not exist for me. Karma, maybe. Lord knows, sometimes I feel like I deserve this.
But all the lifestyle changes I made could not have been leading me here. To this place where I am utterly and hopelessly confused. There has to be more.
With my lost love, I cried wolf. I drove him to his edge and then cried about it. As if who he became was not partially my doing. Anyone would have changed under the weight of how I behaved. I was terrible.
That is not to say he did not hurt me too. He did. But compared to what I had done, it would not even measure. Anyone runs out of patience eventually.
But right now, this man pushed me here while I was in a better place. A softer place. A more loving place. I had healed. I had figured out what I wanted in life.
He does not know how good he had it. He does not know how many people would have hoped, wished, prayed, and begged to be loved the way I loved him. And I gave it so easily. So freely.
All that love I had saved. Guarded. Protected.
Poured onto the wrong man.
Not because I was broken. But because I was healed. More loving. More grown.
The twisted fate of timing.
So now what?
Do I accept that I missed my cue to start a happy life? Maybe. I could tell myself that. I probably already have.
But I am too fabulous to belong to the wrong man. And too fragile to end up in the wrong hands.
My sensitivity is not always tears.
Sometimes it is slammed doors.
Shattered glass.
Rage.
She Was Sea 