Leaving feels bittersweet, and if anything, it only gets harder and harder each time. It’s not just the distance that makes it difficult, but how terribly unfortunate it all is, too.
How can I possibly tell you just how much I’ve enjoyed every minute I’ve spent with you? I find myself struggling to find the words that would do justice to all the incredible ways you’ve made me feel, often through the tiniest things you do. Things you probably don’t even think twice about, but that somehow mean the world to me.
Although, yes, some of it has been equally heartbreaking, too. But I knew what I was getting myself into, even if we keep getting carried away every now and then, allowing ourselves to forget, however briefly, the reality of what this is.
I find myself reasoning with fate, asking why it had to happen like this. How can the one wonderful thing that happens to me also have to be the most unfortunate thing? How can I feel love so deeply, and have it reciprocated, yet never truly get to hold on to it? How can something feel so right and still be so terribly wrong?
I guess that’s the beauty of this love, if there’s any beauty to be found in something so unfortunate. How all we can ever do is yearn for something we can never truly have. Or maybe we isn’t quite the right word. Maybe all I can ever do is yearn for something I can never truly have. And what a devastating reality that is.
I hear stories of people who have experienced incredible loves in their lifetimes, who have fallen in love, gotten married, had children, and built entire lives with someone they adore. And I can’t help but feel a little sorry for myself, because at this age, I’ve never quite experienced anything as remarkable. Not even once. Sure, I’ve met some amazing people, and I’ve had relationships filled with so much potential, too. But none of them ever quite worked out. And it isn’t even just the fact that they didn’t work out. It’s that none of those experiences, however meaningful they may have been at the time, even come close to what I’ve begun to feel today.
Although, to be fair, for a large part of my life, I never really thought about settling down. Either that, or I had immense commitment issues. I could never quite be certain that I would feel the same way about someone the next day, let alone for the rest of my life. The thought of forever was always a little too overwhelming, and perhaps I never really understood what it meant to want someone enough to imagine one.
Anyhow, I suppose a part of me has always considered myself a little unlucky for never having experienced something so profoundly meaningful in my life. Looking back, there’s so little I feel I can truly hold on to. And now that I’m finally experiencing something that feels this extraordinary, I find myself making comparisons I probably shouldn’t.
Because when I look at his life, and then at mine, I feel as though I bring with me almost nothing. There’s so much wholesomeness in his past, and even in his present. So many beautiful experiences, so much love, so many memories, and an entire life that has been built around things I’ve barely even come close to experiencing. And then there’s me, with all these years behind me and so little of that kind of happiness to show for them.
I can’t help but feel like a bit of a loser sometimes. Or perhaps I’m just jealous. Jealous that there’s so much wonderfulness in other people’s lives while I find myself with so little of it in mine. And as awful as it sounds, sometimes it even makes me feel a little less of a woman. As though there’s something about womanhood, about being loved and chosen and building a life with someone, that everyone else seems to have experienced in ways I somehow missed out on.
And I know how terribly unfair that is to myself. I know that a woman’s worth could never be measured by whether she has been loved, married, or made a mother. I know that life isn’t a race, and that there’s no particular age by which we must have experienced certain things for our lives to have been meaningful. I know all of that, at least in theory. But knowing something and being able to convince your heart of it are two entirely different things.
Sometimes I wish I could have this conversation with someone whose life I secretly envy, someone who has experienced all the wonderful things I’ve spent so much of my life wondering about. Maybe they could ease my nerves, quiet all this negativity, and reassure me that life has a way of working things out for everyone in its own time. That just because something hasn’t happened for me yet doesn’t mean it never will. And that perhaps I haven’t missed out on life as much as I sometimes convince myself I have.
Because I do believe that, somewhere deep down. I believe that what’s meant for us will find its way to us, even if it takes a little longer than we would have liked.
But I suppose what makes this particularly heartbreaking is that, for the first time in my life, I’ve found myself wanting things I never thought I would. Things I used to be so uncertain about suddenly feel like the most natural things in the world to want. And perhaps that’s the cruelest part of it all. To finally meet someone who makes you understand the beauty of a life you never quite imagined for yourself, only to realise that the very person who awakened that longing in you may never be the one you get to share it with.
And I wonder if that’s what makes leaving so difficult each time. It isn’t simply having to say goodbye to someone I’ve grown so terribly fond of. It’s having to leave behind, over and over again, the little life I get to pretend is mine whenever I’m with him. A life that feels so wonderfully ordinary in those fleeting moments, and yet remains so painfully out of reach.
Perhaps what hurts most is knowing that I finally understand what it feels like to want a forever, only to find it in something that was never promised one.
