Our Story Was Different From All Other Love Stories

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Ours is a story about love. A story different from most tales of love we tend to indulge in. A map full of valleys and hills along deserted roads sometimes leading into busy streets. A story with detours through mysterious roads and fields of green.

Our love was the sweet tea or lemonade on those warm muggy Sunday afternoons. One full of innocence. One where we reverted back to the days of being a teenager, talking on the phone for more hours than ever slept. Eyes barely staying closed because the thought of seeing each other again is worth all of the deprivation in the world.

There are those kinds of love that live. A separate entity all on its own. The reason for breathing, the reason for being alive. One that pumps the heart because it is no longer owned by you. An irresponsible kind of love. Irresponsible in the sense that no matter what oceans this love takes you across, you remain the target of a sinking ship if one of you gets lost at sea.

Our story begins with a boy meets girl. Girl does not like boy. Boy’s first impression remains that of a boy. How did he win the girl over? He stood the boy, that’s how.

He stood around while girl recanted tales of her current boy and the woes she faced. This boy who stood across from her on many occasions listening as if every complaint remained the first, with no interruptions and no indication of boredom. This boy, offered consolation, he offered advice; he offered a shoulder to cry on. Then one day, girl came to the boy feeling like the weight of the world had been lifted off of her shoulders. She came to recant one last tale; that of which she dumped the one who was not feeding her soul. Here we stand: boy with girl. A new chapter in a book full of unwritten pages. Pages waiting for fresh ink to write the story of what is to be the greatest love story ever told.

This is Jack and Rose without the tragic ending. This is the time where the breath of life actually began. A kid walking through a toy store, eyes wide like saucers at everything he could ever want.

This love was new. This love was brand new. It is the type you hand write letters and await the ink to dry for. One that needed more than a screen with abbreviated letters and different pictures displaying what is meant to be felt. Emotions that can only be felt when one authors their own story. This love is the fifty years from now I will unfold pieces of paper that have so many wrinkles, bends, and creases it is hard to read, but that has been read so many times, it is known by heart. This story does not end. It is a continuation through souls passed down from generation to generation. This is the in-any-lifetime-I-will-find-you-because-we-are-meant-to-be type of love…

But, this story? Our story? Is none of what I thought it would be. It was the type of love that hurt to depths of my soul. A pain that can only be explained as if death itself came for me, laughed at my sorrow and walked away, because it simply was not my time. A love that left me shattered into a million pieces.

Our story was one for the books; except it read as a “How To” of routes crossing the United States with red marks of paths not to take. This type of love was a facade of feelings we convinced ourselves we had.

Ones that were hard to describe because feelings are, well, feelings. They are expressed like a moonlit sky with stars speckled as far as the eye can see shining bright little bulbs of hope for every dream we ever shared together as we both lie on the freshly cut grass, smiling because those dreams were infinite. Our love was a brief moment in time. It was one that encompasses the entire being as a guide book on what makes a person whole, but also, what can be done to split that into two equal sections of the same person. Two equal sections that we had to figure out which signs to follow: The heart that beats in tune with the rapid speed of each others? Or, the head that spits thoughts as rhymes and riddles as to which direction will heal you?

Ours is a story about love. Love that began together but became a life lesson on how to be found apart. It was the type of love that we had to find within ourselves.

A love that carried distance in the form of thousands of miles; different countries spanning the length between us. Ours was one that taught us separately wounds made underneath the flesh take time to soften, but may never truly heal. That is the beauty of our love. It was the representative standing at a microphone pleading its case. Influencing people surrounding us that together we are a unit.

Underneath the internal bruises and cuts we inherited over the years, the type of love we have is the one we can fifty years from now see each other from across a crowded hall, down a busy street, or on a deserted island and know, our story began with us.

It was the lesson we as children were not aware would leave an imprint. It was the type that would never sustain the heart of the storm together, but separately? It could withstand any natural disaster that came our way. Our love… well, our love became its own separate entity. It became the one that taught us how to thrive limitlessly as individuals.