Spring Cleaning

Five years.  Five years I waited for this day.  My heart has ached for five years without him, and tomorrow it will all be worth it.  Tomorrow I can finally tell him I love him.

I fell in love with my best friend five years ago.  TJ was funny and kind and the sweetest man I had ever met.  Our personalities just clicked and from the moment I fell in love with him I knew it was a love that was like nothing I had ever felt before.  Finally, I was happy, I found my best friend, my person, my soulmate and he was mine for life. I couldn’t believe it, we had been friends for so long, how did I not know it was him?  We were both so wrapped up in other people we were missing what was right in front of us. When we both finally realized our feelings for each other, it was like something out of a movie.  

As much as I loved TJ and he loved me, something was off.  We were both about to graduate from university and begin our lives as adults.  The stress of adulthood and these new found feelings made what should have been an easy, beautiful love story, a bit difficult.  I had never loved anyone the way I loved TJ, but I was starting my life, my career, so was he, and we were struggling to find the balance.

I knew moving away meant saying goodbye to the perfect man, the man that would have been my best friend for life, but it also meant a new start, a career that I loved, and finding my true self.  When I left TJ on that last night, it was the most difficult thing I ever had to do. I didn’t know when or if I would ever see him, or hear his voice again. I always believed in letting things go, if they were meant for you they would find a way back.  I was anchoring on this. As I left TJ he told me “give it five years, we’ll be together, I guarantee it.”  

These words have echoed in my mind for five years, did he really mean that?  Does he remember? Is he still in love with me? Am I still in love with him? So many thoughts, worries and fears have ran through my mind for so many years, but of course I still loved him,  I never stopped.

In these past few years, I can say I have truly found myself.  I landed my dream job and I am honestly, irrevocably happy. I am a  powerful woman with a successful career, and I am happy for once without anyone else.  But I miss him. Five years later, and I still think about him everyday. His laugh, his kindness, his hugs, not a single part of him has left me.  What amazes me is that I have found myself, and I am happy but I still miss him, which tells me that I never needed him to complete me, but I wanted him, more than anything in the world I wanted him. In all these years no man has ever come close to making me feel the way that he did.  He’s my person, and if anything, the time apart made me realize more than ever how much I really do love him.

Although we don’t talk as often, TJ and I never lost touch, we catch up here and there, check in on each other as best friends do.  Yet, to me, it always seemed distant, neither one of us wanting to say something that would cross a line. It was obvious we both always cared about each other. 

 When I woke up that spring morning, I knew it was time.  It had been almost five years exactly, and the first day of spring seemed like the perfect day for starting over.  I was excited, but also terribly nervous. Was this the right thing to do? What if he doesn’t love me anymore? 

There’s no way. There’s no way I’m wrong about this.  My heart aches when I think of him, it’s been five years and this man still gives me butterflies, if I still have these strong feelings, then he has to still love me, right?

My fingers trembled as I dialed the phone, what if he doesn’t answer? 

But what if he does? 

Would he be happy to hear from me? 

Just do it, dammit!

 You will never know if you don’t try.  The phone started to ring, I could barely hear it over the sound of my heart pounding.  Pull yourself together. 

 Connected.

“Hello?”

The sound of his voice instantly reminded me of home.  All the memories and feelings rushed back. This was right. 

 We small talked for a bit, work and the weather, but there was an obvious reason I called, I knew I had to say it before I changed my mind. Before I knew it I was blurting it out.

“TJ, I love you.  And I don’t just love you I’m in love with you.  I’m still in love with you and I think I will always be in love with you.”  I paused, but not long enough for him to answer. 

 “I never stopped loving you, all these years, you’re all I think about, and you’re the only person I want to be with.  I love you.”

My heart raced as this flood of emotions came over me.  Silence on the line, fear in my heart, adrenaline racing through my veins.  Finally he spoke. 

“I love you too.”  

This was it, the words I have been waiting so long to hear.  My heart had waited so long to be full again.

“ I love you,” he repeated  “but I’m married.”

My heart sank.  A pain I had undoubtedly never felt before, worse than the first heartache, worse than anything I had ever felt.  Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. No. This couldn’t be true. How was I wrong about this? There was no way I was wrong about this.

It could have been the adrenaline running, or the shock of it all, but I don’t remember much of the rest of the conversation.  It was as though my ears weren’t working and his words were a blur. He thought I had moved on? Something about letting me go? It doesn’t matter.  He was married and that was that. The man I had waited five years for, wasn’t waiting for me.

Before I knew it, that beautiful spring day that started off as a new beginning turned into the beginning of the darkest time in my life.  I waited and waited and my feelings never changed, little did I know, slowly over time, someone who I would had never given upon, had given up on me.  

Did I wait too long? If I had told him sooner would I be his wife?  Were his feelings ever real?

I don’t know where to go from here or how to heal from this, but what I do know is that I will never wait for love again.  When you find love, you tell them, scream it from the roof top, tell the world. Don’t hide it and don’t wait. Love is something meant to be shared.  When you hide love, the only person you are hurting is yourself.