We don't get to put our heartbreak in a box and leave it behind us

"Marla, I no longer chase the empty promise of happiness. What I have with Brielle works, and I am at peace. The life I always wanted to live with you, all the things I always wanted to do with you, I do them now, I do them with Brielle. I will always love you. I battled every demon from hell to get over you. I am not sure if I have finished those battles. You left for your new life in Milan. You left me here in Paris with so many questions to which I did not have answers. You left me with a pain I can never describe. I did all the usual things people who have had their hearts ripped asunder do. I tried being busy to ease the pain, but no matter how good I thought I was succeeding in pushing the pain away, it always came back. The pain would return, and I asked myself if I could ever climb out of it. Today I am free of the tyranny of being in love with you that ruled over me for years, and my heart has started to heal. That night, which I will never forget, you said to me, 'Make sure she is the last woman who is not me.' I am finally at a point in my life where I have stopped trying to find the happiness of you in the arms of another woman. Today, I can hold a woman in my arms and not need to imagine she is you. When I am with Brielle, I see Brielle, not you. I have a long way to go, but I am going to make it."

"You are saying you have moved on from me?"

"It is not as simple as you state. We don't get to put our heartbreak in a box and leave it behind us. We take it with us and learn how to integrate it into who we are becoming in the next chapter of our story. I haven't moved on from you. I have just moved forward with my life. You are a big part of who I am, and I take you; I take all that is us with me as I move forward. You are still very present in my life. I see you in bright sunny mornings, in dark cloudy afternoons, in beautiful star-filled nights. I find pieces of you in every song. I smell you in every flower. I seem to hear your laughter always in my mind, ever so faintly. Your face screams at me from every crowd. You're everywhere to me, and at the same time, you're not. It's a bizarre feeling to be haunted by someone who is alive. I may have moved forward, but I will never move on from you, Marla. I still get jealous of the sun, which always gets to kiss you good morning, of the wind which gets to mess up your hair, of the strangers who get to see you even for just a few seconds, enough to marvel at your eyes or your smile. I will never stop loving you, Marla. I have just learned to live without wanting you."

"You really no longer want me."

"Marla, for years, you sang a song that I only I heard. "

"Do you no longer hear that song, Tommaso?"

"I still hear it, and it is still a beautiful song. I just could not live my life hoping to dance to that song with you any longer. I still love you; I always will, but I can't let the music of my past dictate my dancing as the music of the future collides with my present."