It Was and Now It’s Not

I haven’t written in a while because truth be told, I was going through a breakup. It’s been ten months now and my thoughts have become refined. 

For a while, I couldn’t believe that the love I experienced was real. I couldn’t believe that love could end– that it could end the way it did. “It wasn’t love”, I’d tell myself (as if this brought solace or something). But it was. Just because there was no happy ending doesn’t mean that it was not love.

I remember confiding in a friend once, when my feelings were still big and abstract. “It was and now it isn’t”, he said. At the time, I found this response to be ridiculous. It didn’t make any sense to me. But here comes the good part where I tell you it makes perfect sense to me now. It was and now it’s not. It is truly as simple as that.

I remember the first time he told me loved me. I was nineteen and in the midst of a depressive episode. My melancholy always came with the August heat. It oozed from me and stuck to me like sweat and I was ashamed. This is not how I wanted to be known. 

I wanted to be known for always dancing, even when there was no music. I wanted to be known for wearing weird color combinations. I wanted to be known for my love of literature. I wanted to be known for a lot of things but mostly, I just didn’t want to be known as sad.

I had been avoiding him for a few days, insisting I was sick. I had a feeling he knew this was a lie but I preferred his skepticism over his pity. I didn’t want him to feel bad for me. I didn’t want him to try to understand my sadness. It was mine. 

After a few days, I concluded that my melancholy wasn’t going anywhere. I was going to be sad for a while and I couldn’t avoid him forever. So I called him and asked him to pick me up. A short while after, his wine red car pulled into my driveway. I walked out through the garage. As the garage door went up and our eyes met through his front window, I feigned a smile. It didn’t feel very convincing as I wore it on my face. 

I was pretty quiet on the ride back to his house. “I’m sad. Sad to my core. I don’t know if anyone has ever truly loved me and I am scared no one ever will,” I wanted to say. Instead, I made trivial statements like, “It’s not as warm as I thought it’d be”.  He didn’t appear bothered by how menial our conversation had been. 

We got to his house and immediately headed to his bedroom. We spent most of our summer in those four walls, having sex or watching TV, usually both. That night, we laid in his bed with the TV on but neither of us were watching. My face was nuzzled into his neck and I breathed in his familiar and comforting smell. “I have to tell you something,” he said.

My heart fluttered; I couldn’t handle bad news. “What’s up?”, I asked, trying to mask my anxiety with nonchalance. 

“I love you,” he said.

And just like that, love was born. 

That relationship is over. But the love is not. That’s the thing about love– it refuses to die. Untouched by space and time, it lives and lives and lives.