One Love

You have always been my one. I say ‘my’, not ‘the’, because you are not a character, not an idea. You are not a concept people dream about, nor are you someone that is hard to find. You are simply it, my one in existence, my only option. My life. 

But that’s not to say I don’t ponder what would be if you weren’t. What would it be? If I hadn’t chosen you? If I let myself go, let go of these ties that wrap themselves around our every limb, constraining them under the mask of protection and adoration? What would be, if I had made just one different decision? Just the lack of a click of a button, the button that begged me not to do it?

“Withdrawal Application”, it said. 

“Are you sure?”, it said.

“This decision is irreversible.”, it reminded me once again.

“We’re sad to see you go.”, it solemnly read. 

I repeated those words in my head for months. I’d play them over and over and over again, that chain of messages, each more desperate than the last. I looked at them sideways, upside down, front sided and back sided. I could never figure them out. 

Why did it care? A school that never knew me. A school I never even set foot on. A school that had no relation to me, none other than my love for it throughout my childhood and beyond. The only love that's ever rivaled yours. 

I clawed at the walls in my mind trying to decipher what it meant. What would have been. I never even let myself know. The day before the decisions came out, I left the fight, broken but in love. Gave up before it all had even begun. Took the opportunity to make a choice, a real choice, right out from under my own feet. 

And I tried not to think of it, distracted myself by falling even deeper into love with you. Anniversaries, birthdays, holidays passed, each a better way out of the caverns in my mind than the one before. I couldn’t let myself feel regret for a decision that I never even made. And I wouldn’t let myself feel regret for choosing love over ambition. I never wanted to be that vain. 

But still, those questions remained. The never-ending ‘what if?’s haunted my nights and days. The never-ending ‘what if?’s never left in the first place. Though I tried to force them to go, by getting lost in your beautiful, love-able, unforgettable face, they wouldn’t budge. It was like they were stuck up there, summoning themselves to the front of my mind every time I was starting to live. And I just wanted to live again. With you.

So, I never told you this, but a year later, I did it. I tried again. I had to. I didn’t want to want it, and I had no intention of doing it, but it was out of my control. The questions had finally taken over, extending themselves to my fingertips, refusing to acknowledge their existence on my lips. When you asked, I lied. The questions lied of their own existence. 

Because they had to know. I had to know. Not that I would go, not that I would leave. But just to see. Would they still want me? Would you have still wanted me?

“We’re delighted…”, it read.

And I cried that night. I cried so hard, so beautifully. My pillow was warmed by the furious temperature of the tears. The back of my throat was sore from the screaming. I couldn’t feel a thing other than the cold air on the only uncovered part of my body, the bare back of my neck. It felt like I was 16 again, in my pink and purple bedroom, sobbing with my head against the backboard, wondering when my life had become so barren. Wondering why I had always, and back then thought I would always be so, very, alone. What did I lack? What was wrong with me? And why didn’t you see it like all the others did? Why did you love me?

I cannot say what you may see. I couldn’t possibly imagine it. I look at you in between breaths when the cast of the moon illuminates what I can see, and yet nothing is visible. Do you love me more for giving everything to be with you? Do you think I’m a fool for sacrificing the future I once had? Or do you think nothing, nothing at all, just taking what happens as it does and not thinking another second once it's over and gone? 

The last possibility is the one that scares me the most.

I dream every night. You know this, as you appear in almost every single one. But only almost. You do not know of the dreams I do not tell you of. The ones where I roam old stoned hallways, immerse myself in a book under the shade of an oak tree. Play a silly game of frisbee, or go to an unexpected frat party. The dreams in which I sit in an economics class one day and look to my left, where I am met with a face. A face that I have never seen. A face I only meet in my dreams. I do not know whose face it is, but I believe he dreams of me, too. The look in his eyes when he sees me for the first time every dream is something my subconscious could have never imagined. 

But those are all just dreams. Far off fantasies of a world I denied, a path I didn’t take. A love I will never find. 

No, I may not have here what I may have had there. But there is one thing I know to be true. Truer than all those dreams and fantasies and imaginary meet-cutes.

You are my one, and I would much rather have a decent life with you as my lover than a completely happy one with you as a stranger.