January 25, 2021

Devoted Lover

When he looked at her, it was as if everything in the world paused for eternity. The earth stopped spinning, the stars shined extra bright, and the moon, so big that he could see the craters amongst it. When he looked at her, everything in his left felt vivacious. He felt truly and extraordinarily alive for the first time in his life. Unfortunately, feelings like this can be quite bipolar. The stronger the high, the stronger the low. The more intense feelings, the more intense hurt that comes with it.

She was a pretty girl, with blonde hair and hazel eyes she was the “it” girl at all times of her life. Through schooling, growing up, and even work, she was the girl everyone strived to be with. The way she walked so graciously so that every hallway was her runway. Heads turned and eyes widened by the people she was around. But it was not only her looks that impressed people. Her energy, her vibes, made everyone in the room feel her presence. They felt a ray of sun come into the room through a window, heating up the room slowly. Despite the fact that she had every person longing for her, she longed for no one. She seemed virtually uninterested in anyone that made strides to be with her. It wasn’t because she was focused on her career or her future, it was because she no longer trusted herself. Impossible to know but it must’ve been years before when she stopped trusting her heart.

A broken heart can change a person, for better or for worse. She tried to believe that it was for the better, she told herself that everyday. Everytime she thought about him, everytime she tried looking for someone else but couldn’t find the attraction, she reminded herself that it was for the better. She had the type of broken heart that physically hurt for awhile. The kind that couldn’t contain itself and caused her to fall and break down on the floor sobbing, crying to go back in time. Wishing that he was the same person that she had met and that she was the same person that had fallen in love with that boy. But atlas, at one point or another, they had both become different people. They had become strangers and were clueless as to how they would love each other. This caused the broken heart. For many people they have their heart broken many times in their life. She had fallen in love before this boy but he was different for her. He was the one. He was the one that she imagined marrying, having kids, and growing old with. He had become her life, as she had become his. Their love was allconsuming. It didn’t matter what anyone else thought or said, nor did it phase them at all. No one else knew or remotely understood what they truly had. Even describing what they had right now does not give it any justice to what it actually was. What they had was real and they both believed that one way or another, they were the ones for each other.

Choosing to end their relationship was the hardest decision of her life, and she hasn’t had an easy life. The day she told him, the day that she shattered not only his heart, but her own, is one that she remembers vividly. The way the phone rang as she was waiting for him to pick up. The way she felt a hole in her stomach when she first texted him that she needed to talk. The way that all this had been building up for what seemed like weeks at the time, but looking back, was more like months. Her voice broke, in a way that stung the back of her throat, as she told him what she had been rehearsing in her head. He fought back, as any devoted lover would in a serious relationship, but she remained strong. As hard as it was for her to not take it all back immediately, she knew that she deserved better than he was treating her, and that he deserved better than how she was feeling about him. She ended things with him, completely. Not just a break or some time apart she ended the relationship. That didn’t stop her from continuing to think that they were on a break in a way. That, in fact, they did need some time apart in order to be better together. She was intuitive this way, being so sure of herself and how she was feeling, she knew that the two would end up together. This faith in what they had only made it hurt worse and made her suffer. It seemed like endless nights after the two had separated that she filled her nights listening to “their” songs, making herself feel and hurt, day in and day out. She was often afraid that if she didn’t make herself feel all the emotions that she was feeling, that one day she wouldn’t feel them at all. That was a thought that hurt her more than the heartache that she sustained. She knew that as soon as she stopped feeling, as soon as she stopped hurting, it was done for good. Maybe it was her stubborn personality but she could not let go of that hurting. She could not let go of everything they had been through, it was too much for her. In months and years to follow, she tried to let him go, and the feelings that came with him. She tried to forget the memories and act like it no longer affected her. But every time, every single time that she tried to leave him in her past, she always went back to him. She never physically went back to him, but spiritually and emotionally, the flame that they had never died down.

A few years after the breakup, they spoke again. He had a new girlfriend and as much as it killed her, she told him how happy she was for him. She knew in her heart that he still and always will be in love with her, as conceited as the thought sounded. They only spoke a few times before going radio silent again. Neither of them fought since it was a quiet and mutual decision that they shouldn’t be talking. The months following she felt alright most days; she went about her day and he didn’t even cross her mind, let alone his girlfriend. But there were other days where everything came back to her. Where that same chest-pounding pain came back and she found herself where she was years before, heartbroken and crying to their songs. She thought that she had matured enough to handle seeing him with someone else or at least be able to think about him with a straight face, but everytime she thought about him, her heart broke again. Every part of her that had healed, shattered into a million pieces and rested heavy in her chest.

She used to seek comfort in her friends post-breakup but eventually, they could no longer tell her that it would get better. Even they knew that it should have gotten better so their only advice to her was to move on, start something new, and most importantly, find someone new. It was at this moment that she stopped going to her friends for advice and comfort. At first it was only about her relationship but she soon started to avoid telling her friends even the most basic details of her life. She cut them off. She cut off all the people that knew of her and her boy and how heartbroken and stuck she had become. She made new friends and never told them about him. She never told them about the reason her world goes around in fear of hearing someone else say the impossible to her. What no one understood was that it wasn’t that she didn’t want to move on and let him go. She so desperately wanted to do that but could not. It was impossible for her to ever do that and acknowledging that fact became one of the biggest struggles in her life.