Leave it unsaid.
That’s the line I’ve been pep-talking myself with lately.
I casually told him I would text him when I arrived home, to check in and to see how things were going. I never did. I still haven’t. And maybe that was a total douche thing to do, and I’m a tool for not ever texting him back or reaching out. But I know myself, I know my heart, and I know how I am. As selfish as it might sound, I was just trying to save myself from puffy red eyes, a few more tears, and to spare myself from a little more heartbreak. If I’m being honest, a part of me wanted to sit there and type up words, vomiting out every feeling in my bones, then pressing “send”. But then I thought, really, what’s the point in all of this? None of it would have been helpful for either of us, and doing so would not have made the situation any better.
They say that distance makes the heart grow fonder. I think that distance, sometimes, just makes the heart hurt a little more than it needs to.
I thought I could sleep it off. All I needed was more time or more space to forget him. Maybe then I wouldn’t hurt as much to find myself so far away. You see, the problem wasn’t just the distance. The problem was everything else. It was everything we didn’t have in common. We were just too different in every way possible when it came to differences, and sometimes those core values and lifestyle disparities are things that can’t be overlooked or compromised.
I’ve been desperately trying to trump emotion with logic. Let’s just say it hasn’t been working out very well for me because I am far more emotional than logical. I think the hardest thing about all this is that I can’t forget. I keep replaying the memories and the conversations, day-by-day and moment-by-moment. My mind is teasing me in this game of vivid flash backing, and it is relentless. Sometimes I wish this could happen, but you don’t just wake up one morning with a blank memory bank. It just doesn’t work that way, so instead you try to…
Shut it all down.
I keep joking to my friends about shutting it all down, especially the emotions. But I think I’ve failed miserably because I’m sitting in bed at 4am with an ugly cry face and a heart so heavy it’ll probably explode any minute now. I haven’t been able to shut it down. Instead, I’m beginning to slowly feel my body shut down. And in this moment, I’m just going to let it happen because I know deep down somewhere that it’ll eventually be okay.
This morning, I was texting with a good friend of mine and I was telling her how this was never supposed to happen. The funny thing about life is that there are a lot of things that are “never supposed to happen,” but the reality is that they do because God is comical like that sometimes. I used to think I had to be in the right place at the right time, or in the right coffee shop, or the right country, or sitting in the right table with the right friends in that perfectly right restaurant. I don’t think love works like that for me anymore. I’ve learned that love seems to come when you become the person you imagine yourself to be. It comes because you’re so freely and naturally and effortlessly yourself in your element, and that is exciting.
The thing is: I’m not scared about finding love or finding my person, because I know love will come. What frightens me most is when I find myself loving someone way more deeply than I had planned or probably even should, but for some reason somehow you’re just so drawn to them. That’s what scares me most because there’s this deep caring feeling just sitting in limbo inside my gut. It freezes the little logical thoughts I have, and I’m at a loss with words having absolutely no idea what to do with it all. It’s like one second I’m just minding your own business building sandcastles by the shore. And then all of a sudden out of nowhere, a wave crashes into me when my back is turned to it, completely throwing me off guard.
… And all that can happen, anywhere.
