#relationshipquotes

— Shams, The Forty Rules of Love

If waiting meant that at the end of this endless road, I would find my way back to you, I would have willingly spent this entire lifetime waiting. I would have sat beside the ruins of what we were, holding onto the smallest piece of hope, believing that even broken things can bloom again.

But when you speak of waiting, I cannot ignore the uncertainty trembling beneath your words. Your voice carries the weight of a goodbye you have not yet spoken. And perhaps that is what hurts the most, not losing you, but feeling you slowly prepare yourself to lose me.

How cruel it feels to have my dreams interrupted by a person who never knew my heart, who never heard my side of the story, who never witnessed the battles I fought silently just to keep loving you. How unfortunate it is that my fate seems to pause because of someone who never knew the depth of what they were taking away.

So when you ask me if I can wait, my heart does not question the time. It questions whether you have the strength to look at the thorns in my life and still choose to grow roses from them.

Because certainty speaks differently.

When someone truly knows they want you, they do not say, “I am no one to make you wait. Do not keep your hopes alive.” They would rather tell you, “Wait for me. I will find my way back to you. I will fight every battle, cross every distance, and challenge every obstacle that stands between us.”

There is a difference between someone who fears losing you and someone who has already accepted losing you.

I believe in destiny, but I do not believe destiny is an excuse for surrender. Destiny may have been the reason our paths crossed, but love is the choice we make afterward. It is choosing the same person again and again, even when life becomes difficult. It is holding someone’s hand when the world tells you to let go. It is refusing to settle for a love that is convenient when your soul knows what it desires.

I am not a Sikh, but today I find myself remembering a beautiful saying from their faith:“The threads of destiny are woven by hands unseen; what is meant for you cannot be broken by the world. And when the ocean of god’s grace rises, it carries to your shore even the treasures you once believed were never yours to find.”

Maybe destiny writes the first page, but perhaps love is the ink that fills the rest. And when a heart refuses to surrender and a soul refuses to forget, perhaps even destiny bends a little. That is why I cannot sit quietly and wonder if fate will decide for me something that I have chosen with my whole heart.

I was once told that a person can be selfless for almost everything in life. They can sacrifice, compromise, and put everyone else’s happiness before their own. But when it comes to loving someone, when it comes to choosing the person who makes your heart feel at home, perhaps that is the one place where you are allowed to be selfish. And maybe, after spending my whole life putting everyone else first, choosing you is the one selfish thing I would never regret.

But for now my promises and swears would hold me back. Not because I do not love you enough. But because this time I would not beg you to stand up for me. I need to know that you would come back because you wanted to, not because I asked you to. I need to know that you would fight for me because losing me hurts more than the difficulties standing between us. So I will not plead for a love that is still questioning my place in their life.

I may not return first. I may not knock on the same door twice. But if you come back with certainty, with honesty, with a heart that knows where it belongs, I will not turn you away.

Deep inside, there is still a part of me that wishes you would appear in my reality the way you appear in my dreams. Unexpectedly, effortlessly, as if distance never existed between us.

Because I do not think either of us can truly move on. I think we are both standing on opposite sides of the same ocean, pretending we do not miss the shore where we once met. And perhaps the cruelest part is that we need each other the most at the exact moment life has chosen to pull us apart.

Happiness does not feel as bright anymore, and sadness does not feel as heavy either. Because every emotion, every beautiful moment, every painful memory was felt because somehow it carried your name.

We both spend nights crying for each other in silence, yet we continue pretending that we are strangers to the pain we share. I wish distance could be defeated. I wish pride could be softened. I wish the universe would stop testing the love that two hearts are still trying to hold onto.

I did not ask for you with every prayer just to wish for a life where you are no longer a part of mine.

I still remember the way you promised you would never leave, no matter what. I hope for once you could keep our promise forever. I remember believing those words as if they were something permanent. Maybe things changed. Maybe letting go became easier than fighting.

But I do know one thing; the love we had is still alive somewhere inside both of us. Some things cannot simply disappear because people decide they should. So I ask myself: “What hurts more? Being with the person you love and getting hurt, or living without them and hurting anyway?”

And my answer has always been You. I would rather face the storms beside you than experience calmness in a world where you do not exist.I would rather carry the pain of loving you than carry the emptiness of losing you.

And I hope you do not come back unless you are sure. But if you do return, if you come back knowing that I am the person you are willing to fight for, I promise I will not let fear take you away from me again.

So I will wait patiently. Not for words, not for promises, not for memories. I will wait for the moment your heart knows what it wants, not your family’s or your friend’s. And if you know I am the one you want, then stand against everything that tries to separate us and choose me for once, and I promise I would not ever let you down.