In Coming Together, We Tore Each Other Apart

We used to be some kind of magic. Long before any of this started, there was something about the two of us that made us good together. We were loving spirits, the kinds who were accepting and open. We were brave souls, the ones who embraced vulnerability and honesty.

Somewhere along the way, that all changed.

Within our shared comfort grew the ability to inflict pain and to hold grudges. We twisted daggers deep into each other that we didn’t even know we were holding. We became the worst versions of ourselves imaginable. Without noticing, we became monsters to each other.

We said words that bit and carried out actions that stung.

We unraveled into a mess of miscommunication and silence. We spiraled into a pit deprived of passion and the desire to grow. We rotted away as the ghost of our past glory haunted us with every step that we took in the wrong direction.

In coming together, we tore each other apart.

Our union fostered hostility and hesitance. It cultivated distrust and reluctance. It birthed friction from a sense of obligation. But we ignored the decay and swept it under the rug, reveling in our fleeting moments of gilded happiness.

We wanted so badly to believe that we were still the same people we were when all of this began. We constructed a false reality in which we made sense, and desperately clung on to that idea of harmony.

We stopped asking ourselves if we were truly happy.

I often wonder if we fully understood the real definition of happiness. Were we never as compatible as we thought we were? Did we lie to ourselves in order to try and make things work? We once had the potential to be something so beautiful. But in the end, everything we made was toxic.

It would be bold for me to think that it was love, though that would make the struggle and the strife worth it in the grand scheme of things. It would validate the hurt and give our misadventure a deeper meaning.

Try as we may to resuscitate the magic that once sparked between us, we are different people now, ones who are simply trying our best to walk away from disaster unscathed. But we are permanently damaged, undeniably broken. Even as we try to cover up the scars and bruises with band aids of denial, things will never go back to the way they were.

Though our story may not hold a significant place in the universe, I thank you for this lesson. You have taught me that most good things are not forever, and sometimes the right decision is to let go. Someday we will heal, and only then will we know what the purpose of this was.

For now, all we can do is come to terms with our failure and make peace with our reality.