Isn’t it strange that we can feel something so strongly, but the other person might not? That your heart could literally be bursting out of your chest at every touch, and yet, to him it may be ordinary? A regular Friday night with another girl, nothing special, nothing noteworthy.

Isn’t it unfair that we were created to feel, to love, to bind ourselves to other people without boundaries? That we could fall in love with someone who doesn’t love us back? Or who doesn’t love us at all?

No wonder why we close ourselves off. No wonder why we shy away from human connection after our hearts have been broken. No wonder we get bitter and afraid, cold and selfish. It’s because we were meant to love, but not wired to love perfectly.

And our hearts aren’t fair to us, as they go around entangling themselves with words and bodies and hands and kisses and confessions of someone else, without being given permission.

I think about us sometimes, how I fell for your smile, for your hands brushing my shoulder, for the way you always asked me to look into your eyes when you spoke, so there was this connection between us, unbroken and deep, even with all the voices spilling around us in that bar.

You said things to me about my future. You wrote words on my heart with the softness of your voice. It was silly, but against all odds and timing and fate I wondered if there was something big happening between us. I felt it. It felt real.

But maybe it was just real for me.

Because you disappeared out of my life so quickly after, taking those eyes, that smile, those hands and running like hell in the opposite direction. It was as if all that time hadn’t mattered, like a switch had been flicked off and suddenly you weren’t the same, that I wasn’t the same, that this was all some cruel joke just to remind me that my heart has always been too willing to jump without the security of someone to catch it.

Reminding me that I’ve always believed in foolish things like love, as if love is perfect, when I’ve always known that love is so incredibly flawed.

I started to wonder if it was me. If I had been too much or too little. If there was something I could change. Time passed and I realized it wasn’t. I realized that it was you, too afraid to make a commitment, too afraid to believe in something bigger than you, than the both of us. I was scared too, but not too scared to be all in.

You were hesitant where I was fearless; I deserved better than that.

Sometimes I still think about you, about us, about how time changes people, about how life gives us these crazy scenarios that we have to fight through, clawing and kicking and pushing and praying that we’ll somehow make it to the other side.

Looking back, I still wonder what I meant to you, what that night meant to you, what those countless nights and mornings and kisses and moments of laughter meant to you. What each whispered ‘I love you,’ meant to you then, or even now. Or whether, after all this time, I still cross your mind.

I can’t be bitter. We were two sinners falling for one another, learning the ways of this world and the ways of love, which we’ll never fully understand.

Sometimes I just close my eyes and remember your face, a process that both hurts and heals me. It was real for me, then. Real to sit on your lap and talk to you, real to kiss those lips, real to listen to the sound of your snores and pull you closer to me.

I guess I don’t regret it, all those feelings, even all that pain. You can’t help who you fall for, or how you feel. And I guess I just hope wherever you are, that you one day fall in love, true love, big love, deep love.

And I hope you discover what it means, how it feels, when it’s real.