I’ve spent most of my adult life tucked safely away behind my walls. I dated a little here and there, but I was never willing to let it get serious.
It was lonely at times, but looking back, I really value the time I took to learn to love myself and to be independently happy. I hoped that waiting a while to walk into anything real and meaningful might minimize the potential for real and meaningful damage.
Then this boy came along.
I knew letting him in was a risk, but I decided he was worth it and it was time. Time to disassemble the walls and be open to the possibility that maybe we could be happy together; maybe we could make each other’s lives better. I felt hopeful about him, about us.
It was terrifying, and every instinct I had told me to run. But every time I tried to run, he convinced me to stay until eventually I didn’t even feel the urge to run anymore.
One day, I surprised myself when I realized I had slowly made the decision to let myself love him despite the fear and uncertainty. For the first time in my life, I walked consciously towards something that might break me.
For so many reasons, things didn’t work out for us, but I don’t regret letting the feelings overwhelm me.
I thought it would be easy to disentangle my heart. This was my choice, after all.
Nothing about this has been easy. Navigating the unknown never is. Here I am, months later, wondering what I’m supposed to do with all of this love I have left over.
This is something I should know how to deal with by this point in life, right?
Do the feelings, like a wound, ache in the beginning, then become less and less pronounced until one day you forget it ever hurt at all?
Are they like a broken bone? Intense in the beginning but healing over time until eventually everything feels normal. But sometimes, if you look too close or too deep, you still feel an unbearable ache.
Maybe the unresolved feelings linger and fester like an infection, tingling every moment, every movement, with pain.
Does it ever fade completely, or will there always be a scar, a reminder of something that was so close but not enough?
