Our Story Ended Too Soon

By

Sweet girl, I know right now everything feel uncertain. I know you feel confused as to why you lost your best friend. I know that at one point being in his arms felt like home. It felt safe. The kind of feeling where you could fall as far from the ground as possible and there was always someone there to catch you.

Sweet girl, you are beautiful. You always have been. You roamed different state lines and you dreamed big bright dreams. You walked around college campuses with a backpack and had no idea where the road would lead you. You believed in yourself. You found someone that saw that in you. You poured your heart out and shared a piece of you with someone. You were vulnerable, raw, and untouched.

You weren’t afraid to fall. You spoke about him like he put the stars in the sky. He made you feel invincible. He held you tight and made you feel like you were safe. As long as he was by your side, it was just you against the world.

He was the kind of person you wanted to read a book about. When he smiled while listening to his favorite songs, it was contagious. You couldn’t help but smile with him. You wanted to know everything that made this boy so beautiful. You wanted to know if he ever got a scar from falling off a bike as a kid. If there was a teacher that believed in him. If someone changed his life the way he helped change yours.

And one day you turn the page and realize there is no longer a chapter waiting for you. You keep flipping to empty pages and realize the story is done. It felt too short. You go each day wondering what could have been. How should it have ended? Would the story have changed if you spoke differently? If you didn’t talk so much about work? If you were friends before you started dating? You try to flip back to previous pages where the edges are still folded and the sentences are highlighted. You try to go back to old chapters so you can remember what falling asleep next to each other felt like. You want to experience everything for the first time all over again.

Sweet girl, you realize that each time you read the same book over again, it will never be the same as the first time. You start to see the foreshadowing. You see the hints in between sentences. You realize that the same story becomes different the second time around.

You want to go back and ask the author why things happened a certain way. You want to know if things could have been different.

You turn to the last sentence on the last page and realize that you can’t change the story. He’s not your story anymore.

Sweet girl, you have to remind yourself that you were and still are beautiful, even when he no longer tells you. Take a deep breathe, wash your face, and remind yourself that today is a new day. You will outgrow this story, the way you outgrew old loves and old sweaters sitting in the back of your closet. You decide today that it is just a growing pain. You will move on. You will find home in yourself and in your friends. You will get giddy over new stories and new chapters.