One True Loves

Maybe, if you’re the kind of person who’s willing to give all of yourself, the kind of person who is willing to love with all of your heart even though you’ve experienced just how much it can hurt . . . maybe you get lots of true loves, then. Maybe that’s the gift you get for being brave.

You wonder how each moment bled into the next and created the days, months, and years that now all feel like seconds? That’s how I feel. Right now. In this moment. It feels like our entire past together spans eons and the time I’ve spent without him is an insignificant little flash. I have loved Jesse since the day I saw him at that swim meet.

I was wrong before, when I said there’s nothing more romantic than the end of a relationship. It is this. There is nothing more romantic than this. Holding the very person that you thought you lost, and knowing you’ll never lose them again. I don’t think that true love means your only love. I think true love means loving truly. Loving purely. Lovin

My dreams, the rope and the knots, I know exactly what they mean. You don’t tie yourself to something unless you’re scared you might float away.

There is other love out there for me. But it’s different. It isn’t this. It isn’t this exact love. It’s better and it’s worse. But I guess that’s sort of the point of love between two people—you can’t re-create it. Every time you love, everyone you love, the love is different. You’re different in it.

“We loved each other and we lost each other. And now, even though we still love each other, the pieces don’t fit like they used to.” I could make myself fit for him. He could make himself fit for me. But that’s not true love. “This is it for us,” Jesse says. “We’re over now.” I look in his eyes. “Yeah. I think we are.”

Jesse is a different man than he was before. I am a different woman. And what has confused me ever since I found out he was alive is now crystal clear: We are two people who are madly in love with our old selves. And that is not the same as being in love.

“I feel naked. Like I’m raw. Or like I’m . . .” The way he’s trying to find the words to describe how he feels makes him look like he wants to jump out of his skin. He’s jittery and chaotic in his movements. And then he stops. “I feel like my entire body is an open wound and I’m standing next to someone that may or may not pour salt all over me.”

Where we reunited and broke our own hearts. And walked away in two pieces.