If Feelings Were Enough

If feelings were enough, I would take you to fresh, green fields at twilight, and we would just lie there and let the nighttime shadows wrap us in a tight embrace. After a while we would get up and dance beneath the starlit sky. The songbirds flying about soulfully serenade us right as our lips meet… I guess all I’m trying to say is that if feelings were enough, I think you and I would have had a real shot.

But life isn’t a fairytale, and relationships act accordingly. When everything is said and done, feelings by themselves simply do not cut it. It doesn’t matter how strong or reciprocated they are. Because really, what good is love if it has to be manifested from a thousand miles away with the exception of one holiday break every year? Or perhaps, what good are feelings if you’re too afraid to stand up to your parents who don’t approve of me to make this work? Or what good is affection if it must play second fiddle to my studies or my extra-curriculars or the career and life I have planned for myself? These are things I know I just can’t sacrifice.

I mean, I love you but I love me too. Not much good happens, I guess. I’ve never doubted how I felt for a second, but how much good does that really do in the grand scheme of a relationship?

All these factors led to an endless array of fights, which stacked up and ripped our relationship to shreds. Love simply could not save the relationship by itself; the other things just meant too much, especially when they all conspired against love. I mean, the feelings were still there, but everything else went to shit. We hardly saw each other. We barely talked and we did we just argued. Making love was still amazing, but it became the only thing we had left. Soon enough, even that fell flat. Though we rolled with it for a while, it was hopeless. It was like having a romantic dinner on a ship sinking into hell. We smiled softly and sipped our wine as we slowly descended to our fiery deaths.

And now here we are, broken up and drifting further apart each day. This is what’s left of us now. Our best memories make me feel like shit, the opposite of what they were intended to do. I can’t help but feel like it’s my fault, though deep down I know it isn’t. I can’t help but feel like there was so much I could’ve done, but not really. Could I have saved this relationship? No. Not in this fucked up world, at least. I’m sure of that part. But what if the world were perfect? What if feelings were enough?

If they were enough, we would have escaped this setting a long time ago. We could’ve gone some place where it could be just you and me and all the time this world has to offer. Each day I would wake up thinking of you and go to sleep thinking the same. We’d go for long walks in the afternoon and gaze at the moon and stars at night. We’d look at them and then at each other, and that smile on your face and glimmer in your eyes would more than motivate me to do this everyday for the rest of my life. But really, know that if this world were possible, I would just hold you in my arms, and no earthly force could ever convince me to let you go

Of course, I know I’m in over my head and I need to get my feet back on the ground soon. School and life and all that resume tomorrow morning, after all. These are the things I could not give up no matter how much I loved you. Still, nights like these both warm me up inside and tear me apart. I lie on my bed, my face towards the ceiling, left to guess at all that we could have been if feelings were enough.