I try not to get too invested in these feelings because I know we will not make any progress if we get back together. Nothing will change at all, and the things that tore us apart will still be there. It hurts to know that you can't do anything about it, because there are so many factors working against you. And this is if I even choose to forgive and forget the things he said to me.
I wrote this over a year ago and it feels like much longer. I was pessimistic from the beginning because I knew that if this love ended it would do a lot of damage to me and I didn't know what to do with that information. Well, you know what I chose.
How do you know you've met "The One"? I ask myself this often, because the concept has always seemed intangible and elusive to me. I'm hesitant to believe I've found it. It's literally what everyone hopes for in their lives. So I'm skeptical. How could I be that lucky?
But what I do know is, I can go months without speaking to him and the second we get on the phone, we're as connected as ever. He told me I'm the only person he trusts, and the same is true for me. We reminisce about the holidays we chose to spend together, and all the beautiful moments that accompanied them.
A few days after the phone call, we FaceTimed each other because I needed math help. We spoke about everything, told jokes, updated each other on friends we had met, and it only ended when his eyes were literally drooping and he couldn't physically stay awake anymore.
What does that mean?
What does that say about us?
Why did he tell me he knew I wasn't the one for him long before he chose to break it off?
I don't really know how to feel anymore. This sounds like a joke but I was watching The Dark Knight a few days ago and I found myself identifying so much with Rachel's storyline in the movie, her knowing that she and the man she loves will never work out until he resolves his own demons, which seems unlikely at the time. It may sound like I'm making myself seem like the better person in this situation, but it's only because my feelings are all I know, and my feelings are that I will always come back to him. I've never felt such a love for someone, such a need to make them happy, and such a connection that I believe would be impossible to recreate. It's like a very, very diluted version of what a mother must feel for her child. Just, "I don't care what happens to me, I just want you to have everything you've ever hoped for". It's hard to explain what I feel when I think about him or talk to him. It's a feeling of knowing with absolute certainty that you will do anything for this person, that you love them so much that you don't even wish the bad parts of them were gone, because then it wouldn't be them. I'm happy when he's happy, and especially when I can make him happy. The only difference between these feelings now as opposed to back then is that I've learned I have to make myself happy too, and that comes first. We may fit like puzzle pieces, but that doesn't mean he makes me whole.
It just means life would be a lot more fun and full of love if he was in it.
It means that I will never want to hurt him, and that I will always try my best to do anything I can for him.
Another thing I know is that these feelings are dangerous. I can't have these feelings and be with someone who doesn't feel the same way. When someone becomes this vulnerable due to feelings of love it's not fair for the other side not to reciprocate. It begs for an uneven power dynamic, and a feeling of fear of losing this person. I don't want to love someone but be afraid that they might wake up one day and not feel the same way. Or even worse, tell me that they never felt that way to begin with.
I'd rather suffer through losing the person I think is The One than be with them knowing they're using my love to make their lives a little easier.
Justin told me I was "emotionally fragile". I've never thought of myself that way, and none of my ex-boyfriends would agree. I've always been the heartbreaker, and have always looked straight through an ex-boyfriend like I never knew his name in the first place. Justin is the same way. So who succumbs to who? I made the decision to let myself become this vulnerable when Justin first told me he loved me and when I didn't respond, asked if he had "ruined it". In truth, I didn't know what to say back to him because I was in shock that someone like him would fall in love with someone like me. Not because I'm lesser than him, but because I thought so highly of him that the entire time we dated I was worried about falling head over heels and him saying, "haha sorry...you're just a girl I'm dating." For him to tell me he loved me first was a complete surprise to me and it's a moment I remember vividly to this day. At that moment I made the decision to completely let my guard down and be the emotional version of me that no one except my cat has seen before.
He, however, chose to be vulnerable at that moment and got no response from me. He thought he had ruined something, and that I would run far away from him. I understand if at this moment something branched off on a different path. I wonder if this initial brief feeling of "shit, I said I love you to her and she didn't say it back" set the course for our doom. People always say the person who says it first is always going to be the more vulnerable one, and maybe he wanted to fight his vulnerability because he thought he had made a mistake. Maybe for the rest of our relationship he made sure to let me tread this new path first, him following closely behind me, but never beside me.
As for me, at that moment, I was so overcome with joy and gratitude for the universe that I was speechless. I was thinking, "this man is an amazing man, and I want to love him as much as he loves me." I didn't know that at that exact moment, maybe he was saying the opposite to himself, reminding himself to make sure my feelings were transparent before his were, and not knowing the effect this would have.
Maybe we were doomed from the start. Maybe my own speechlessness was a pebble in the water, spreading out to everything about us, and turning the tides in quite literally opposite directions.
I believe him when he says I'm the only person he trusts. I know he means it because I know that he knows I would never do any harm towards him. I know that he knows I will always love him. And I'm not sure I like that.
I don't know how to feel about this because it also means that this power dynamic will stay the same unless he fully lets his love bloom freely, the way I let mine grow. I can't put myself in a position where I can be crushed once more, by the same person, because I wanted to give him another chance.
I can't be with someone who's foot is always on the brake, having the ability to put a stop to everything any time he wants to. That's not what love is about. When you love someone you're not in a permanent skeptic mode, examining everything, hoping to see a crack so you can say, "see? told ya". You don't self-sabotage for the chance to feel like you know more about life than others, and that love is just a mirage.
I know, because this is how I used to be. When I tell Justin how all my exes would describe me as a cold-hearted bitch, there's no way he'd believe me. That's just not who I am with him. That's not who he met. And when I tell everyone else about how I am with Justin, how mushy and affectionate I am, they don't believe me either. So the question becomes, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Is me being completely different with one person a true representation of who I am? Is that what True Love is? Finding someone to unlock a part of you that you were sure didn't exist? Or is it a more ominous symptom? Is that normal? Is there something wrong?
For now, all of this is solely hypothetical, as there is absolutely nothing I can do to fix the problems our relationship had, which was distance and an unclear future. Us being together or not will yield the exact same result at this point in time.
My dilemma becomes:
"by believing that I've met the one for me, am I preventing meeting the one for me?"
Of course, this question implies that there is only "one" of those people, but there could very well be both, and then I simply have to choose between them. It's just extremely hard to make a choice when there is no clear outcome. If I choose to cut him off from my life and forget about him, I'm cutting off the most important person in my life, and maybe "giving up" on something too easily that might be the greatest thing to happen to me. If I don't...things will stay as they are and I will have to make the decision to put everyone else on the backburner, as the "other" choice if things don't work out the way I want. The Pepsi in the Coke vs. Pepsi situation, if you will. I could very well be passing up on amazing people just because I'm holding on to a dream.
I wish I could talk to him this way, but I've just seen him turn off his emotions too often during conversations like these for me to really believe I'll gain anything from it. All I can do right now is let life play out the way life does, and if nothing short of a miracle happens, that would fix our problems, and let him put his guard completely down, I would be absolutely willing to do what I can to make it work.
~
You have hardened completely
By the end of this story,
You have learned to look clear
Through the flash of a bulb,
When you hear your own name
From the back of a crowd,
You just straighten your gaze,
No, you don't turn around.
Oh, but there was a time,
At the end of the day,
We were both stood in line
At the museum display,
And you outshone the light
Under which you were bathed,
You could outshine the sky
With the look that you gave,
So don't be afraid
To look back and wave,
Now that waving is all that you do.
At the end of the day,
By the Potsdamer Place,
I am waving back at you.
-"On The Museum Island", Emmy The Great
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