The One Who Got Away

By

The day we met I was taken aback by your approach. You began our conversation so casually as if I had known you my entire life. We had never met before, but in that moment something larger than both of us happened. In that moment I had hope that my entire life was about to change.

The small New England town which hosted our first attempts at young love was not the venue which I would have ever thought I would find love in. I hated it, truthfully, and never really wanted to admit where I went to school or even to talk about it. Post-graduation I made up lies to my childhood friends to make the last four years of my life sound better than they were. During that time, was when I think I lost myself; way before you and I became a now distant reality.

I still cannot wrap my mind around the idea that at the age of 18 I found my soulmate, and the few months before my 28th birthday, I lost him. For ten years I have searched and yearned for that connection again, only to be hit hard in the face with the realization that it’s gone forever.

It wasn’t fully gone though. Last year proved to be the worst year ever for me, and you seamlessly reentered my life as if there wasn’t five years of distance, other relationships, natural disasters, horrible bosses, psychotic stalkers, family emergencies, and schooling separating us. The cold December evening when you picked me up was both nerve wracking and exciting. It was one thing to speak endlessly by email and text, and another to contain all the emotions rushing through me when I saw you again.  In that moment I forgot how to speak, and was just as lost in you as I was when I first met you.

We both let these feelings ride out and were more than eager to see what would happen next. We wanted each other more than life itself. We wouldn’t let the distance or work schedules stand in our way, and when the moment for us to be together again in one city arose, we jumped at it with complete disregard for anything to the contrary. This is where we lost ourselves to something larger than both of us. The relationship which took ten years of our lives became something neither of us could comprehend, and left us with the inability to identify how or what we were feeling.

Any cliché about love being poison can be made here. Because it’s really true. We stopped having thoughts about anything other than being together, what we were doing, or what either of us brought to the relationship to begin with. You might have been the first person to vocalize this, but I felt it from the beginning; our love for each other killed us both.

What I’m taking from all of this is my apprehension to believe what was happening was a good thing was what finally did us in. For years I’ve convinced myself into thinking that marriage and happiness and having a family just weren’t for me. So much so that I was dead set on believing that there could have been any other girl in my spot, and you’d have been just as happy. Just as hell-bent on getting married and starting a family. But then again, I’ve lived for years thinking that I am completely alone only to realize that people actually do care about me. Once you broke up with me, that is.

It took me looking into your tear-filled eyes, telling me that you miss me — your best friend — to realize that you would always be the one who got away. Our relationship wasn’t perfect in the slightest, but we had what no one else ever will: the stubborn outlook that we are meant for each other. That at the heart of everything we were just two idiot hardcore kids bickering like a married couple in Freshman Bio; at each others’ throats over the meaning of whatever political theorist was on the docket for the day; two kindred spirits who found absolute passion, adoration, and undying friendship in someone who appeared to be their enemy; two people who would give everything and anything to have the other persons back at a moment’s notice. These are all facts I never wanted to admit, but are the reasons why I couldn’t walk away before, and why I’m having such a problem doing so now. I don’t want this to be the end. I still want to wake up and look out into the city of Boston and see you… Bringing home our puppies from their morning walk, to hold me in your arms just one last time.