It’s a beautiful and terrifying thing to realize that you are going to love someone forever.

Once their soul becomes entangled with yours, there’s no going back. This feeling is what often leads to marriage and long-term relationships, but ironically enough, the exact same feeling can lead to visceral levels of pain.

Because what if the person you love is completely wrong for you? What if it will never work? What if it feels like the emotional equivalent of trying to jam a square peg into a round hole? What if the literal only reason you should be together is that you love each other? And how do you deal with that moment of realizing that love is not enough?

I can never be with him.

Realizing this was liberating in a way, but also understandably painful. He’s one of the few things I will always want the most, but we’re like two beautiful puzzle pieces that will never fit together. Despite the risky and tumultuous nature of our relationship, we intimately connected to one another more in a few short months than most people do in their entire lives. But the most we will ever be is close friends with that special bond we can always fall back on. For that, I am nothing short of grateful.

But it’s hard.

It’s hard wanting more, but knowing better than to seek it. It’s hard maintaining an expectation-free, non-attachment relationship with someone I expect things from and feel attached to. My greatest struggle has been learning to love him in a different way, but I don’t know how.

I don’t know how to let go of the one person I have always connected with on a level deeper than I know how to explain to people who will never understand it.

I don’t know how to stop letting him into every nook and cranny of my life.

I don’t know how to stop missing our daily marathon conversations.

I don’t know how to stop wanting the feeling of his arms around me when the weight of the world feels a little too heavy.

I don’t know how to stop wondering what it would be like for every inch of my body to touch every inch of his.

I don’t know how to get his memory out of my heart and his music out of my head.

I don’t know how to contain the joy and excitement I feel every time he contacts me.

I don’t know how to stop wondering what he’s up to in quiet moments of solitude.

I don’t know how to free myself from the ghost of what never became.

I don’t know how to come to terms with the pure injustice of our separation.

I don’t know how to adjust to the idea of eventually seeing him with someone else.

I don’t know how to deal with the reality of not being able to hold him when he needs me.

I don’t know how to sleep without knowing if I’ll wake up to a day that involves him.

I don’t know how to fill the space inside my chest that he once occupied perfectly.

I don’t know how to love myself the way he loved (and still loves) me.

I don’t know how to reverse the fact that he ends up in 98% of my thoughts.

I don’t know how to feel gratitude instead of searing pain.

I don’t know how to stop loving him, and I don’t think I ever will. And the most beautiful and tragic part of it all is that I know he’ll never stop loving me either.