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May 12, 2020

When Love Arrives but Doesn’t Stay.

 

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The smell of coffee filled my nostrils just as the sun started to rise with the same passive continuity it always does.

Love kissed me good morning and I felt a hand travel up and down my spine—softly—like a habit, like we’d do it every day for the rest of our lives.

Love made me the bravest I’d ever been. And before I knew it, I was jumping through hoops and going out into the fighting ring with my heart out in the open.

But love wasn’t gentle. Love ignited every single nerve in me. Together, we were passion and adventure, uncontrollable heartache, chaos, madness, and fireworks.

Love and I were two compatible souls coming together and creating a perfect harmony—Beethoven-himself-couldn’t-write-this-sh*t kind of harmony.

Love saw me at my most vulnerable and instead of being fearful, love was inspired. It felt like what some people wait their entire lives for. Love and I weren’t a roller-coaster ride—we were nonstop ecstasy. Nothing short of epic.

But just as love came, love packed its bags and left me.

Love turned cold and distant—love hurt to the touch. I didn’t recognize it anymore and it awoke a painstaking realization in me that sometimes—most of the time—the things we want the most are things we don’t get to keep.

I wanted to run after love and beg it to stay. I wanted to grab it by the heart and explain why it was too late for starting over. Love was already engraved in my skin.

When love left me, it burned everything to ashes and left nothing unharmed. Even coffee tasted different and the bed where we used to lie was soaked in the viscous liquid of agony.

People say you will know when love has left you because it feels like the insurmountable toll of watching everything you ever wanted slam the door in your face. I guess I would agree because when love decided to leave me, it didn’t allow my compassion to keep it trapped—no, it teared hope from me in one swift motion, instead of delivering small blows to make defeat somewhat bearable.

Eventually I let go because I had to.

Years passed before I saw love again. And it looked different this time—rough around the edges. I couldn’t help but stare at it in awe, studying carefully all of the cicatrices love had acquired in its time away from me.

“Where have you been all this time?” I finally asked, but love felt like a stranger. It shied away from me, pulling the trigger on all my newfound chimera. I started to doubt myself—was I wrong all this time? Was it all in my head?

And just as I was turning around to leave, love looked at me with wild inspiration in its eyes and grabbed my hand. I realized that this time love was different in all the right places.

I didn’t feel the soft touch of it on my back. Instead, I saw it in the dark circles under my eyes after a night of reading. I felt it in the laughter that escaped me violently when I danced to my favorite song. I didn’t feel it coming from any other place but inside of me.

And I finally understood, love had tamed its flame so that I could get to know my own fire.

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