I have been in a relationship – all the good and the bad and the worst parts of it – for three years. Thirty-two months of that is spent long distance, so yes, I should know how singlehood feels like.
But the truth is, I don’t. I have no idea how to be alone, because I always had someone – several someones – to go to, whether I just want a person to eat brunch with, or walk under the stars with, or just talk with late in the night. My guy friends love me with such fierceness, that even though we know our relationships are platonic, I never had to feel alone, because when your guy friends love you the way mine does, you would never really need a boyfriend.
And then, there was the boy I loved.
The boy I loved so much, who loved me back without a doubt – that distance didn’t matter. Because when I wake up, I know I am loved. Because I can see it in the way he looks at me. I can hear it in his voice when we talk for hours on end. I can feel it in his every breath. And when he holds me, there is nothing in the world that can hurt me, because it is the only place in the world where I feel safe. And when he said he wanted to marry me someday, and we’re going to work for our future, there is no way you couldn’t believe him, because he meant it with every part of him.
And then, things changed, and I can’t let go.
Because when you give up half of yourself for someone, you have to fight. Because if you love someone, you will find a way to make things work. If you get your heart broken by the one person who makes you whole you give it your all.
Until you can’t anymore.
And then there’s me – I don’t know how it feels like to be alone. Sure, for three years, I have lived by myself, but I don’t know how to be alone. I don’t know if I can survive waking up and not telling someone I love him. I don’t know if I can have something happen to me without being excited to tell it to someone who is more than a best friend.
I don’t know if I can be that.
But the one person who used to make me feel loved, and safe? He breaks my heart every single day, because at some point, space and time can be too much, and it has been too much for too long.
And if I can stop crying, I would. But I can’t because so many things are wrong, and we could break up and find each other again in the future, but I’m scared.
Because I have changed over the past three years.
And right now, I don’t trust myself to be alone. Because I haven’t been in the longest time, and if I have to be whole by myself . . . well, that’s going to be a little hard if someone holds the other half of me, is it?
Aere Perennius 