Forbidden

How do I even begin to tell someone that they mean everything to me, when to them I mean nothing at all? It’s the cruelest reality to live in and sadly, it’s mine. Since the moment I laid eyes on him, I knew he was everything that I needed to have in my life. I knew I was in love. 

How crazy is it to know you’re in love when you’ve only known someone for a moment, but one that feels like an eternity? I’ve tried to tell him, I have, but I’m never able to get the right words out - strange for a writer, I know. 

What he doesn’t know is that I’ve written about him countless times, so many times it makes me crazy. After I’ve just seen him in real life or in my dreams, his image appears on pages and pages of torn up notebook paper. 

He’s tall and strong, but not to the point where he looks the part. I don’t think I’d like that much. He has dark hair and beautiful eyes, but my favorite thing is the way his bottom lip pokes out a bit more than it should. It is very humanizing, something good to remember when I find myself fantasizing about his princely charm.

It’s funny, he doesn’t try to be charming, not at all. He just wants to be nice to people. He thinks it’s important to be a good person. He doesn’t do it in a fake kind of way though. He will be honest in any situation, but will always do it in a way where it’s impossible to hate him. I could never hate him. 

We used to work together. That’s a dangerous game to play - falling in love with a coworker… your boss actually. I remember Valentine’s Day after we met, I wrote him a poem. It wasn’t a very good one, and thankfully wasn’t too incredibly cheesy. It pretty much told him that I was the best friend he never knew he needed. I’m sure he didn’t believe me at the time, but I know that he appreciated the gesture anyway. That was only a month into us knowing each other. Flash forward a year and I was right.

There are a lot of things stopping him from saying everything he wants to say to me. I know there are things he will never say, even if he didn’t have any obstacles in his way. He is ten years older than me, which scares him greatly. But that isn’t the true thing standing in our way. I live with a boy. I have since before I met my love. My boyfriend is a great guy, but I know it isn’t going to last forever - not when I have fallen in love with someone else. 

So here I am, keeping secrets from the potential love of my life and my boyfriend who believes I am his love. He is so sweet, I just can’t break his heart. But I know when the truth does eventually come out, it will be the most soul crushing thing he ever hears. How do you take it when your long time girlfriend tells you that she has loved someone else for a year of your year and a half long relationship? It’s an impossible situation to deal with, but here I am in the middle of it. 

There was a time when I tried so hard to stop loving this new man. The only thing that happened was I ended up falling for someone else. I talked to that guy about it and he said he didn’t feel the same way. I don’t believe that. I believe he was trying to save my relationship for me. He worked with me at that time as well. I thought long and hard about breaking up with my boyfriend back then, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I really do love him too.

How do you have this conversation with yourself? The one in which you finally decide it’s time to do what you’ve known needed to happen for a really long time. How do you break up with your boyfriend - your best friend because you’ve fallen in love with his boss? Why do I only fall for guys I work with? It’s an endless stream of questions that keeps me up most nights. I don’t sleep much anymore. 

It’s Valentine’s Day again. I can’t come up with a single thing to give to my boyfriend as a gift, but I have written my love another poem called “Part 2”. He lives just down the street from me. I picture myself going to his house and leaving it in his mailbox, but that would probably scare him away. If only there was a way to do any of this without hurting my boyfriend. But I can’t have my cake and eat it too.

Last Valentine’s Day, my boyfriend disappeared for two days straight and my love was the one there to pick up the pieces. I cried and cried, but for some reason I gave my boyfriend a second chance. I’ve regretted it ever since. That was my way out and I didn’t take it. Why didn’t I take it? I was angry for so long and my love was always there for me. I never once complained about my boyfriend to him, but maybe I should have. Maybe then he would’ve told me how he felt.

When the day does come that my boyfriend and I are no more, I will tell my love immediately. I will not just inform him of the breakup, but I will tell him everything. He’ll know about the time I had an anxiety attack, keeping me up all night. It was because of him. He appeared in my dream and I turned my head to see my boyfriend sleeping soundly by my side. All I wanted was it to be my love holding me in his arms, but he wasn’t there. 

From that day forward, I worked hard to learn everything I could about him so one day when the time came, I could tell him that I care. And if he ever had his worries he could come to me too. So who knows what will happen in the future, but what I know right now is that I am in love and that means more than any obstacles that will ever get in my way.