And our love was great.
I sometimes daydream about the future. I fast-forward into what life might look like for me a decade from now. I’m out having a usual cup of coffee at a caf that frequent. It’s a nice day out. The sun is shining brightly casting a beautiful warm light to nature’s children but the breeze of the cool wind is enough to keep me from sweating. Sitting down across from me at the table is a good friend of mine. We sit and we talk about almost anything that surrounds our lives the unimportant and the trivial.
And suddenly, the conversation drifts towards the topic of previous relationships and past flames. I give off a subtle smile because a rush of memories run through my head and there are lots that I have to say about the topic. I think about all of those intimate and precious moments with people who used to play very important roles in my life.
But among the small sea of faces, yours is the one that stands out. It’s our story that is a cut above the rest. It was our love that I most wanted to talk about. And I decide to tell her about you because all of the little details of our love are still fresh in my mind.
You were an amazing boy. You were awesome and I don’t use that word liberally. You really did manage to strike awe into my life. You were so enchantingly handsome and I felt like I was looking at a fairytale clich whenever my eyes managed to catch a glimpse of your face. You always had this uncanny ability to make me weak in the knees even when it wasn’t your intention to do so. You made me stutter even though I was a typically confident and self-assured woman.
If my friend proceeded to ask me what kind of person you really were, then I would just go ahead and list all the reasons why you made it so easy for me to fall in love with you.
I would tell my friend how it was such a gradual and intimate process. I remember how painstaking it felt for me that we were taking things so slow. I had never approached love like that before but somehow, it felt completely natural despite its unfamiliarity. You were always smart and you always knew the right things to say and the right moments to say them. You always knew how to conduct yourself whenever you were with me. Even early on, I could tell that you were a brilliant human being who was destined for great things. You were probably the most profoundly intelligent person I had ever met at the time; and how you always managed to get me hooked on whatever it is that you had to say to me. You set yourself apart from the others in that way.
I’m going to recall how our courtship was deliberate but it never felt like anything was forced. I never felt pressured to do anything or be anyone that I wasn’t comfortable with. You always managed to make me feel comfortable despite the fact that you were the type of person I had never had the opportunity of being intimate with throughout the course of my life. But you made it work. You made me fall and you did so effortlessly. I wish you fell for me in the same way but I doubt that was the case. I was a klutz. I was an uncoordinated fool whose heart was lost and damaged, but you still managed to make space for me in your life. I don’t know what I did to win you over, but I was lucky enough to have done so successfully despite my ignorance.
And our love was great. I knew that you loved me in a genuine manner and I knew that I loved you the same way. I also tried my best to make sure that you felt my love; that you would never have to go through life doubting the legitimacy of my feelings. I never wanted to make you feel like you had a reason to doubt my love for you. And I think I did a good job at that. But somewhere along the line, we grew apart. I knew that I had still loved you and that I wanted to have a future with you, but somehow, our plans for the future just weren’t meshing. I wanted so much to share a life with you but somehow, our ideas of living life started to differ fundamentally and I didn’t know how to reconcile that.
In hindsight, looking back, maybe life just happened to us and we weren’t ready for it. Maybe we weren’t cut out for being together for the long haul after all. But that doesn’t mean our love wasn’t real.
