When I said hello to you, I had no idea of the devastation your goodbye would bring.

You were my lover and my companion. Ever since I was sixteen, I knew you were my destiny. Yet as young as I was, I knew our story was not one that would last.

That did not stop me from loving you.

You charmed me with eyes so alluring and a smile so riveting that I found myself enthralled with you. You spun me around with your lies and pretense, so real that I fell under your spell. You swept me away in this whirlwind romance. I was like a hyper-speed rollercoaster diving straight into destruction and praying you were there to catch me. I was immersed in flames that you lit and I got what I bargained for when you left me in ashes.

I loved you to the point of no return.

You established a stronghold in my mind and possessed the space in my heart. You branded your presence on my skin and engraved your name on my soul. I loved you to utter madness. But you took all my words and made my thought incoherent. You broke my concentration and left me delirious with thought of you.

Loving you was the aftermath of a disaster. The damage was done. Trees were uprooted and houses were in unrecognizable wreckage. The sunlight that shone on my face was a mockery of what occurred before. Shell-shocked, I could only huddle my arms around myself, shivering as you proceeded to tell me how I absolutely meant nothing to you anymore.

Just like that, you were gone and our relationship dissolved into dust.

I wanted to pretend nothing happened and everything was okay. But just like the hurricane, you couldn’t leave quietly. You crushed my hopes and dreams of our future so ruthlessly that I felt that it was the end. You broke my heart so mercilessly that I forgot I even had one. You destroyed the last shred of my sanity that I felt as though I was stuck in a recurring nightmare with no possibility of release.

Loving you felt like time travel. My gaze fell on your familiar dark eyes and my throat constricted as waves of memories came crashing back. Suddenly, I felt as through I was a teenage girl again, eagerly following you around and waiting for you to give me your time of the day.

I remember the first time I told you how much I loved you and you did not say a thing back. I thought of how I begged you not to go and how my pleas fell on an unmovable heart.

It doesn’t matter how long it has been because I still remember it all.

Loving you makes me grow up in a way that changed me.

No longer do I hold unrealistic expectations towards love. Nor do I harbor any childish dreams of what I hope love could be. Never will I attempt to mold someone into my vision of a soulmate. Nor will I try to force love to work.

Not in any way will I chase a relationship so desperately that I lose myself. Nor will I ever make someone my entire universe such that my existence crumbles when the same person leaves.

I have become more grounded with reality and have learned to be more rational instead of following my heart blindly. I have become kinder to myself by not blaming myself for someone’s shortcomings, and realizing that they’re fighting battles that have nothing to do with me. I have become more confident and certain of what kind of relationship I’m looking for and walk away from those that do not serve me in any way.

I have become more independent and I have become my own soulmate instead of waiting for love to save me. I have become stronger and have healed my fragmented heart by myself. I now know that I’m completely whole without you or anyone else by my side.

I have become myself – the me that I’m proud of and the one who has no need for you. The me that thrives without you.