I Could Have Loved You

I never want to leave you.

Meeting you was a random twist of fate but loving you was my own decision. Everyone warned me to stay away and I had every reason to.

But call me foolish or naive. I wanted to believe that beneath that icy exterior and layer of hardness was the right person that I was waiting for. I wanted to think that I was the special one who would change your mind towards love. I wanted to be the one to melt your untouchable heart and be the love you never forget.

I never want to leave you and if it were up to me, I would have rewritten our story at the end of every goodbye so that we never had to part. I would have chosen to forget cleanly all your transgressions just so nothing could shake the irreplaceable place you held in my eyes. I would have given every inch of myself to you hoping it would somehow be enough. I would have loved you till the end of time and death would have to pry my lifeless fingers from you.

But the more I try to hold on, the smaller I find myself shrinking into. The harder I try to live up to your ideal, the more unrecognizable I become to myself. The deeper I fall for you, the more I fall out of love with me.

And it had come to a point that I have to make the decision that as much as I loved you, I love myself more. For my own sake, I have to get away and carve out my own path. In fact, I have worked so hard to get ready for a life without you. A life brimming with untold possibilities and oozing with hope for a better future. An exciting life of materializing all my wildest dreams. I am so close to it that I could almost taste it.

I never want to leave but towards the end, you left me with no choice.

Watching myself telling you that I had to leave was one of the most difficult things I had to do. There was no sense of victory I anticipated or indescribable joy that I waited for. A tiny part of me felt robbed of the happy ending I wanted with you. There was lingering regret and every fiber of my being protested against leaving you.

How I wished things were different. How I wanted to take back everything I said and go back to the way things were. How I yearned to stay with you.

But I swallowed the unspoken words and turned away. In the end, there was nothing left to say. You have made your choice and I too made peace with my decision. In this universe, we were never meant to end up together. In this reality, you were my vice that I had to overcome to get to where I need.

What I wanted to say to you was that I could have loved you. We could have something special- you and I. I could have stayed if you have asked me to.