There are times when you want to say things to those you love, those close to you, but you can’t. You have to let them live it, feel it, learn it. Because me telling you what I know now, it’s not going to change the crazy things you’ll do or feel. It’s not going to change anything, it will only make me seem arrogant and complacent.
It does not go away. There are certain people in your life, certain feelings that do not go away. They remain. They sit in a quiet corner of your heart and they are silently a part of you. The hurt they once imposed upon you, it returns like waves in the ocean. Constant, steady. Not every day, but ever-present. The love they once shed over you, it will haunt you. The lack of closure, it will keep on knocking. It’s not a matter of “getting over” or “moving on.” Yes, those things happen. But forgetting, forgiving, learning to love again the way you did that first time, I’m not sure it’s ever FULLY possible. Partially, of course. Completely, not so much. Here’s why.
A woman, she’s designed to love love. The first time she finds that, it’s irreversible, unchangeable, and most importantly it’s original. So to separate her from that, it’s like tearing her away from what she longed for up until that point. It’s to take away from her that sweet, innocent feeling of being told, “you are loved.” It’s to rip out of her arms and her possession the person who, for maybe just even a moment, fulfilled her every need. It, quite honestly, is to break her from that which completed her.
The thing about love like this, the “first” love. The “I still need you sometimes” love. The “Why am I still thinking about you?” love. The thing about it is that people think you’re supposed to pick up, drop off, move on. You’re supposed to all of the sudden forget that person. Even if you’re living streets from one another with completely new lives. Even if you’re supposedly “grown up” and “mature” and “so much better” than that which once was. You’re EXPECTED to be over it.
Here's what I want to yell though: I don’t think you do get over it! I don’t think it ever goes away. I think it’s something you learn to cope with. Learn to cherish, try to understand. But to make it fully go away. To expect that person who is so much a part of you somehow disappear. I don’t believe that happens. I think people lie to themselves, try to FORCE themselves to forget it, to make it “go away.” But I don’t think it’s wrong to still feel pain over something so precious. I don’t think it’s unfaithful to your new love, to sometimes be distracted or distraught over your past emotions. This is not to say, “I’m still in love with him or her,” but rather to admit, “Yes, I know what it’s like to have loved and lost. And sometimes, though I wish I were stronger, I’m not strong enough. I can’t deny I know that pain and that joy all in the same. I do know it. I do feel it as I would feel it to reach out and run cold water through my hair or burn my fingers on a hot iron. I know it and sometimes I have to be sad about it. And then I have to collect myself and keep going. Because it is gone. “
So though I wish I could tell you, “It gets better, it all goes away.” It does not. It remains. It hurts. It heals, but it leaves a scar. A visible one, not one that you can cover up with make up or a sweater. It does not ever fully go away, so please don’t hold that as your goal at the finish line. May you only wish to know the satisfaction in feeling that you’ve finally learned to hold yourself together after being absolutely broken into a million pieces. And be grateful that God gave you someone (or many someones) to love and be loved by. And most importantly, that you’ve learned to carry yourself with grace and composure rather than tears and in a state of disaster. That, in and of itself, is as much “closure” and “moving on” that I believe happens with time. The rest, time only makes hazy. It doesn’t heal as much as people say it does. I promise you, that, when face to face with your past or whatever/whomever it is you’re trying to move on from, when that dreadful moment comes that you try to prepare yourself for, I promise that your stomach will still clench, your heart will still ache. The only difference is that you’ll be able to keep your chin up and a smile on, and PRETEND you’re not effected. Other than that, it’s all still as horribly painful as it was on the day that you shut that door.
