That-I Think-Is Love

“I’m sorry that you can’t love.”

As a poet, as a human, as a dreamer, I have learned to love. I have learned to grapple with loss, I have learned to endure the heart ache, and I have learned to heal. But you, my dear, you are so caught up with what people think, with distractions, that you cannot bear to confront the very pain which I have learned to feel and accept. You think that feeling is weak and that to feel, to express that feeling, is to be soft in a world where only the rough survive. I think that you’re wrong. 

“I loved you,” you said, but I never felt loved. 

Though, perhaps you did. Now, the problem is not whether you loved me or not, it is that you cannot heal from it. Still, three years later, we sit here arguing about the same subjective things that we did then. Except this time, I have healed fully. I am no longer in pain from looking at you, I am at peace with it. It has taken me so long to understand that to heal is to absorb the pain, to feel every frayed heart string, to graze every wound until it scars, and know that even then the pain may return stronger. And in that acceptance, I found that it is worth it to love and to lose. To be human is to love and lose and keep on loving just the same because that love, that loss, and every feeling in between is what humanity is. So here I stand, face to face with you and your feelings, healed and aware that you are not. 

“Maybe.” 

You only wince at the words, but you don’t fight back like you usually do. A little more mature now, I think we’ve come to the consensus that you cannot argue over how one feels, only the somewhat objective facts of it all. Maybe now I understand, after all, everything is clearer in hindsight. Maybe now I understand that you never felt the way I did for you. You never felt the need to give everything for one person, you never felt the want to have them by you as every beautiful moment escapes through my fingers, as fleeting as time itself. Maybe you never felt that and that’s okay. I never did know how you felt anyway. I guess this is less a treatise on whether you can love or not than a lemma on whether you can heal or not. 

“Did you ever love me?” You whisper, your voice quivering just a little.

I’ve never seen you quite this vulnerable. 

I did. I did much more than you can possibly imagine. And maybe one day you can feel that way for someone else because I hope you can get to experience how I felt for you. And maybe one day you can love someone else truly, without fear of heartbreak, without fear of the pain you do not deign to confront. And maybe one day you can look back, after having felt this grand love, and wonder if I felt the same then. And if you ask me that I will say, “Yes, that is how I felt for you.” And we will reconcile, perhaps. 

“I do.” 

Shock passes your face as you discover that I haven’t stopped loving you, but you must understand that to love is to never stop loving. To love is to recognize that you will always feel a certain way or another person and despite any animosity, you will always want the best for them. To love is to understand that you may never love anyone else again, and perhaps I am okay with that, after all, we did have a hell of a love story. 

You stammer to find words but, as a poet, I have already formed mine. I have already gone down every path of this scenario, thought through everything you may say. 

“I love you and I hope you know that. I never meant to hurt you.”

It’s true. I never meant to cause you such pain. I just wasn’t mature enough back then. When confronted over and over with the choice of you or me, I always chose you. So when I had had enough, I chose me. Maybe that’s selfish, but it was a necessary choice to find myself–I think. 

“So then why hurt me?” 

I never meant to hurt you, really I didn’t, I just needed to choose myself. 

“Because, for once, I needed to put myself first.” 

I’ll tell you the truth, now that I know it. 

“You didn’t have to end things.”

Perhaps. 

“Maybe not, but maybe so.”

Being cryptic has always been my strong suit. If I can't lie, I have to at least hide my feelings somehow.

“What the fuck does that mean?!” 

That I'll never know whether it was necessary or not. After all, there is no counterfactual.

“We’ll never know! Maybe I wouldn’t be here if I chose you over me.” 

I really don’t think I would be. I was in a dark place then, that much you know. 

“So this is my fault?”

Pin the blame on the tail of the donkey. No one’s to blame here. 

“Not in the slightest.” 

Pain crosses your eyes, a pain you cannot bear to feel. You loved me in the way that you know love. For you–I think–love is to like someone and commit to them. But love for me is sacred, love is more than just an oath. It is to know someone inside and out, to hold them in times of pain and comfort them, to understand their very soul and recognize them in another life entirely. It may be romanticized, that much is true, but my love is not your love. 

I accept that love does not have to be by the same definition to endure the struggles of life. But for that to happen–I think again–there must be communication. And perhaps that is where our relationship ended. Not that neither of us loved the other, but that neither could express it in understandable terms. Your language did not meet mine and perhaps the fallible language was the loss of love. 

“Look, I take back what I said. I know that you love, and perhaps you did love me, but it didn’t work out, and that’s okay. Just know that, despite everything, I’ll want the best for you.”

Despite everything, despite all of the horrible things you said after our break up, despite all the rumours and lies, despite it all I will always want the best for you. 

That–I think–is love.