I know you wanted it to work, and I think you knew I did too. But instead, all we learned is sometimes things don’t. Sometimes things that are beautiful fall apart, no matter how much of yourself you invest, no matter how much love you’re willing to put in, and no matter how vulnerable you’re willing to get. Instead of what we had blossoming, it stopped, because we knew it had to.

I will never not blame timing. Had we been older, had we not been moving, had we been at different points in our lives, it would have lasted. There are so many “if onlys” and if all of them had aligned, it would have worked out. We would’ve worked out, that is. We could’ve stayed together, fought for each other, and kept making each other happy. We could’ve kept showing each other love and support. Our fingers would never have had to unlearn the feeling of the other person’s skin. Our lips would never have had to unmemorize the other’s.

Too often, I wake up thinking “what if?” What if I was waking up with you next to me? What if you were the first person I called when I woke? What if every morning, there was a text from you, telling me you woke up thinking about me too?

Every once and a while I still get that text, and I guess it reminds me that these things, these feelings, these regrets, even, are real for you too. People have always told me that when you break up with someone, you can’t turn to them for support. In fact, they’re the one person you aren’t supposed to go to. But we still go to each other. We still lean on each other for sympathy when one of us needs the other. When someone has been your primary support system for so long, it’s impossible to cut that connection off, and it’s even more difficult when there wasn’t a “reason” for the break up.

That’s the shittiest part of timing not being on our side. There was no other great reason to separate. There was no blow-out fight, no cheating, no messes or fires to put out or people saying the wrong thing. There was no incompatibility. There was only the numbing realization that this wasn’t our time, and that prolonging the end was useless. That’s all there was. And because of that, there wasn’t a reason to be mad at you. I almost want to be mad at you, because that would make things so much easier, but I can’t be. You did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong. And yet, we’re not together anymore.

In the end though, we weren’t the only two things in the world that had to line up perfectly. I know we did, but there are thousands of other minuscule variables in the universe that also have to line up for real love to work and to last.

You once told me you would always have a place for me in your heart, and I hope that stays true. We will live in different places, and be with different people, and do different things. And at some point, the desperate desire to call the other person whenever we have good news (or whenever we fail) will fade. But I hope the door to each other’s lives never fully closes. Because even though the timing wasn’t right, I know we were.