Your birthday passed a couple of weeks ago.
I noticed.
I did think about you.
I didn’t text (but I debated) mostly because you hadn’t texted me for mine (two weeks before). I sent you a note. Did you get it? If not, it said I unblocked you.
It’s hard to believe you happened, that we happened. We happened over a year ago. That summer, our time together, feels too big to fit into the bounds of a start and end date. But we did have a clear start date—a golden waterfall shrouded in fog, a kiss you started, a lit billboard on the side of the highway.
We also had a clear end date—a night at one of our old places (this time there was snow on the ground), hours of tears because I was too late, calcified love, distance.
You feel so far away now. I understand the connection between space and time, but not the distinction. I suppose that’s the point.
Sometimes I wonder if we ever happened at all. More often, I wonder if we ever ceased to happen. I’ve been dreaming since our goodbye, I’ve been half-conscious, stone-faced and sharp-edged. The essence of me is still with the essence of you, still in Montana in your bed without a top sheet, still tangled on the couch and kissing your forehead, still holding the bouquet of wildflowers you collected, still walking hand in hand through my neighborhood at dusk.
This year, my summer felt quick and small. Linear. Simple.
Our summer was lumbering, gentle and limitless. I remember it all—a second date sitting on a stump by the old Story Mill when we were still new to each other, the tunnel under the interstate when I learned what it meant to be yours, 22 beaded bracelets (I still have them), chapters of handwritten love stories (I’m scared to search for them), how it felt to have my hands on the back of your neck.
Part of me is there. It’s yours. It spans space and time, it defies all known laws of physics and biology and humanity, and it’s there. Still loving you. Still needing you. Still merged with you.
Maybe this is how love, the worthwhile kind, works. When you fall in love you are briefly, gorgeously complete, when you fall in love you crack some and flow into another soul to become something you were not before.
When that love is lost, that merged and mixed and altogether beautiful part of you snaps off and spirals away. It leaves a void, black and furious, one we smother in vodka shots and toxic self-affirmations and false denial, one we fill with bodies and shame and guilt.
It ruins our lives for a while until we learn to adjust. Then, the void starts to shrink. We grow back into it. It heals over, we relearn how to exist, we think of ourselves in new, healthier ways, and eventually, we’re a ‘new person’ bursting with ‘self-love’ and emotional byproducts and the love that was once our entire world becomes insignificant.
We marvel at how much has changed and how far we’ve come. We gawk at who we fell in love with. We look forward, and dream of someone better.
And it stays that way for a while.
Then, something starts to glitter through the fog of our carefully constructed explanations. We’re reminded of that first kiss. We realize we’ve kept some trinkets and letters we probably shouldn’t have anymore. We start sensing that somewhere, sometime, that same love we’d cast aside still exists in a very tangible way, and we are still engaged in it, affected by it, in a blurry sort of way. We know this because we can feel its presence. Its soft pull.
We’re aware that part of us is missing and always will be. We’re left with a nostalgic peace, a gentle appreciation, sweet memories, and keepsakes. That is what’s left over, whether we’d like it or not. Part of us is permanently missing, because we once belonged to another person.
Once, we opened our rib cages and let our hearts run free.
Once, we had the courage to give it all up and throw it all in.
Once, we fell in love, and that’s not something you can take back.
And that’s the consequence of a life well-loved, that’s the consequence of a love well-lived, that’s the paradox of loving—when you give yourself to someone, you don’t quite ever get it all back.
Sole Magazine