It has been exactly a year since someone left my life whom I never wanted to leave. This past year I've done much less dating than usual because my heart just hasn’t fully been in meeting anyone else. A year later and I’m finally finding the lessons I needed to learn from this experience to fully move on.
Our "breakup" didn’t have a lot of closure and consisted of us crying and saying, "I love you," as he slowly made his way through the airport doors. Two and a half years for the Peace Corps and 15,000 miles away (we counted and then I cried) our goodbye left a lot to be desired. Shortly after dropping him off I was in a car accident. I was so distraught I had become an obvious road hazard. For weeks after he left I could hardly get out of bed. My time was spent smelling him on my sheets and listening to sad love songs. I wrote him every day for a month. I would daydream about him showing up ragged and tired from flying home all night and showing up at my doorstep to be together. It was heart break at its finest and even now it pangs me to remember the pain. But remembering the pain and working through it will release me from the energy clutch I’ve carried for an entire Earth's rotation around the sun.
He isn't perfect and neither am I, but together who he is and who I am worked. It wasn't that he had the checklist of things I've wanted, it was that around him I was me - the me I adore. He gave me a sense of security in a relationship that I hadn’t felt in a long time. I trusted him in every sense of the word. I didn't feel insecure or wonder if he would disappear without calling or suddenly lose interest. When I got in my head about our relationship and got fearful about the future, he would calmly remind me what truly mattered and that he wouldn't let me run away. When my commitment-phobe side would take over he would casually give me space knowing I would come back.
I wish for everyone the kind of love we experienced based on growth, understanding, and patience (more so in his case). For everyone to meet a someone like I had for a short time. A someone to kiss your entire body before saying "good morning." A someone who reaches for your hand when walking farther than a few steps out the door. A someone who washes your dishes not because you ask, but just because. Someone who calls it "making love" and means it. Someone who makes you feel like the brilliant, incredible person you truly are.
I don't hear from him anymore and my head makes that mean he has a girlfriend or doesn't care about me. In the end it doesn't matter. In my heart of hearts I don't believe we will be together again. I'm hopeful to see him and welcome him home with open arms empty of expectation. I gave up a lot of purely hopeless romantic ideas around the same time I gave up chick flicks. Dreaming of him coming home early to be with me is something I wouldn’t wish for now. I wish for him to experience whatever he left to find and know I’m here in whatever capacity he needs me to love and support him.
So much time has passed and I confess that some nights in those quiet moments before I fall asleep I still think I feel his arms around me and I want to whisper "good night." I no longer cry when this happens instead it gives me a chance to speak to him in the only way I have available. Presencing myself to our separation on a physical level may be far, but as spiritual beings we’re intimately connected.
We had perfect moments and I don't dare try to recreate them. Those perfect moments together I so desperately want to forget as a way of moving on, but forgetting isn't the answer. These memories serve me, reminding me not to settle for anything less than what we had and how I felt. The challenge for me means moving forward with the memories still intact.
Someday I will hear a love song and not think of him. Someday my past won't be in my present as a way of preventing me from sharing myself fully with someone else. That someday is now and I now know it. Most importantly I learned that this kind of relationship exists - whether it happens again in a month, a year, or a decade. I had perfect moments with an imperfect person that gave me the space to live, love, and learn. Now letting them go - never to be forgotten.
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