Reflected Imagination

I look through past things that I’ve written, and the years and the love that I’ve experienced through them have changed my perspective on what I care about. I always thought that life, for women at least, was a dichotomy of choices: you could be in love or you could be successful, but you couldn’t be both. I’m struggling with that thought right now. Maybe if I hadn’t done so much, we would still be together. Maybe if I had less on my plate or I never left home or I prioritized our relationship over myself, we would still be together. It got me thinking how life was supposed to work out. The last two years I was soaring. I was successful and I came home happy to a boy who loved me every single day. And it still fell apart. Years ago, I would’ve been bitter and told myself that I can’t have everything. I think now that I still can, and I’m still hopeful at the possibility that my life is going to work out and I can have both. I can care about both. This just wasn’t the time that it would last. One day it might.

He once told me that “happy people make a happy couple, but a happy couple doesn’t necessarily make happy people” and I think about that a lot now that he’s gone. We fought, but we never stopped loving each other. I think we spoke different love languages and never had the chance to fully understand each others. It was still the best thing that ever happened to me. I’ve started to accept the possibility that we could’ve been in the best relationship in the world and it wouldn’t have fixed the fact that my actions couldn’t have changed what happened. I’ve cried for the past five months and I’ll probably keep crying for a long time. But I know that I loved this boy and he loved me. Love, loved. That’s what I’ll remember. That’s what I’ll hold on to. That’s why I have a reason to keep fighting and to keep living.

I have this weird feeling of comfort in my life, even in the wake of something traumatic and all of the sadness that has come with it. I got to experience a love like this. Maybe I’ll get to fall in love again, and maybe I won’t, but I got to have something this good while I was this young and it’ll forever have a lasting impact on me. To me, it wasn’t a bad relationship, but a beautiful relationship that just so happened to only last two years. Anything else that I get in my life is a bonus.