Four years later, and something inside me stills pulls me towards you, even though we haven’t spoken since. It feels like our souls connected that first day I saw you. That day you popped over to the café where I worked, dressed in your impeccable way, and I felt something in me light up. I was a hopeless romantic before you, but I wasn’t sure I believed in love at first sight. But my god, you intrigued me. As soon as I saw you, I wanted to know more about you; your story, what made you light up, where you came from, just everything. It was a feeling I had never felt before and haven’t felt since. It was a feeling of hope and possibility and wonder.

Sometimes I wonder whether the people who hold our hearts with their hands know how precious it is. Because when you touched me, I felt the world standstill. Everything fell away except for you and I. It was you and the Glenn Miller Orchestra that played softly alongside our Summer adventures that made me smile bigger than the moon. I fell deeply, all consumingly in love with you before I could even breathe. That day that we took our first shower together and sat in the darkness next to each other, singing, while the world turned ‘round, I knew I loved you.

For the silly thing about love is, it is uncontrollable by the human mind. No being can force when it happens, just like no one can control gravity. It just is and will always be in the form that it takes. My heart became yours between the silly puns that rolled so effortlessly off your tongue, and the small sketches you drew on the back of paper napkins for me. I felt so at ease with you, like it was meant to be. You felt like home.

I don’t know if you knew this, but the initials of our first names when combined spelled “WE.” How fitting that was because for a while we were unstoppable; a true power couple. I began to imagine what our lives together might be like years in the future if it all worked out. Those imaginings were so perfect, I began to worry they weren’t going to happen. It was as if a part of me knew that our love was too beautiful, that it couldn’t last. For in this world, nothing stays beautiful forever.

When you began pulling away, all I wanted to do was pull you closer. Hear you whisper, “I love you,” in my ear one more time. Have one more night where we fell asleep peacefully side by side, while the troubles of the world were held at bay outside the door.

If for some magical synchronicitious reason (I think I just made up that word) you are reading this, if this has found its way to you, there are a couple of things I want you to know. As a reminder, your soul is pure art, flowing freely in this world. It’s as if Michelangelo and Degas decided to form you out of clay, and earth, and sky. Your voice is like the wind, soft and smooth but can carry the weight of the words you utter with ease. When you struggled with your own demons, how I wished I could carry them all on my back for you. For when you laughed, it was like sunshine piercing through dark clouds over the sea.

We said always, as all young couples do. For my heart, it was true. But for yours it seems, it was not. Sometimes I wonder whether we were meant to part, to learn and grow on our own and then come back together. Sometimes I wonder whether your hatred of me now helps us move forward so that we learn those lessons we’re supposed to in this life. But the logical, reasonable part of me knows that we are probably done for good and that hoping and wishing won’t bring you back to me. I don’t know why sometimes in this life people have to love and lose; is it really better than not loving at all?

With you, it felt like we fit together perfectly, like candy corn and pistachios. Every German text you sent me, every photoshoot we did, every living room dance to your record collection made me feel like the luckiest girl in the world. However, I also started realizing just how amazing you were, and how much I didn’t love myself. I think my jealousy came out of not believing in myself and thinking you were perfect. It was hard not to because the way you exist in the world is like magic. I saw you as this wonderful man who was too good for me, but I know now that putting anyone on a pedestal isn’t healthy.

I was so young then, when you loved me. I barely knew myself at all and didn’t have a flow chart for how to deal with my shadow sides. My biggest regret is that you were the one I had to love and lose and hurt so much, out of sheer youthfulness. I didn’t mean to hurt you, but I was young and had so much to learn. I wish I could be meeting you now with this version of myself. She isn’t perfect by any means, but she is so much smarter, kinder, and more stable than she used to be. 

I don’t know how not to love you and I don’t know if I will ever stop, but I’ve made peace with missing you; it walks beside me now. It lingers in the background of my life, reminding me every day that I’ve lost someone dear to me. Maybe that missing is a friend I will have with me for a while. Maybe it’s something that will remain with me until the day I close my eyes for the last time. Or maybe, it is a temporary missing that is a gentle reminder something wonderful is still yet to come.

I don’t know how this is going to end. All I know is that the love I have for you is real, unfading, and raw. All I know is four years later, I still miss you. And god forbid, I hope you miss me too. I guess I’ll know when I grow too old to dream.