‪Some Ramblings on Time and Young Love

‪Time. That’s what still fucks me up about my ex. I didn’t know how little time we had. I, like a lot of people in love, foolishly thought we would be together forever. He said he wanted to marry me. We had all these grand ideas about what our future together would look like. Thoughts of where I went wrong and what I should’ve done instead used to flood my brain until it was all I could see. For months, I ached with remorse. His absence and the loneliness I felt stung, but the regret burned white-hot. It couldn’t be soothed or rubbed out. It blistered and bubbled up. I felt every inch of it.

‪Now, when I think about time, and if I were able to turn it back, I think I simply would have enjoyed what we had more.

‪Savored it. Relished it. I would’ve held on a little tighter, for just a little longer. Had I known how we would end, with such abruptness, with such icy cold indifference, I would’ve basked in the warmth of our young, sweet, green love while I had the chance. ‬

‪I just didn’t know, and that’s what fucks me up. I didn’t know our last kiss was our last kiss. I didn’t know the last time we had sex was the last time. Our last “I love you.” Our last afternoon nap together. Our last meal. Our last phone call. Our last road trip. Our last walk around the block with our dog.

‪Our last late night musings over cheap wine and beer. Sitting on the porch, looking up at the moon and talking about nothing and everything. I can almost smell the familiar scent of his Marlboro Reds. Of fresh cut grass and cool, crisp springtime air. Of $7 Barefoot moscato. ‬

‪Our connection was electric and all-consuming. It spread through my life and ravaged everything in its path like wildfire. Eventually, I lost myself in it. In him. ‬

‪He became the sun. And I was just a tiny little moon in his gravitational field. He shrunk me. He balled me up and made me so small. So insignificant. I let him do this, so he’s not entirely to blame. I saw it happening and I did nothing but hold my breath. ‬

‪Our love was toxic towards the end. It marred me and scarred me in ways I won’t forget. He changed my perception of myself. I never felt lower than those last few months with him. ‬

I wasn’t an angel and I wasn’t perfect, but I was not unkind to him. He can’t say the same thing. He was unhappy—I made him unhappy. And if he wanted to leave, he should have. But he did not have to be so cold about it. So unfeeling.

He simply changed. He morphed into a stranger I could not recognize, someone who could hurt another person with little to no remorse.

‪It wasn’t always bad like that, mind you. In the beginning, he and I were beautiful together. Our love was a lot of things, but more to the point, it was brief. Sometimes it feels like it never even happened. For that reason, I wish I could have known. Not so I could have done things differently. Not really, not anymore. It happened. It it what it is. No, if I could go back, I would have simply took the time to cherish our sweet little journey together. To see it for what it was. To revel in it. To bask in its warmth while it lasted. ‬

‪Even now, I still have so much regret and grief inside of me. I don’t know what to do with it all. I don’t know where to put it. I don’t know how to put him down. How do you know someone like that, inside and out, love them so hard it’s nearly suffocating, and then just... set them down? ‬

‪How do you not see pieces of them everywhere you go? A book they would have liked, an article they would have found interesting. A dumb meme they would have laughed at. A silly personality quiz you would have wanted them to take. Their favorite foods and movies, a song they knew word for word. The soap they always used while you’re grocery shopping. These mundane, unpoetic pieces of them. How do you put it all down? How do you make it small and insignificant? How do you ball it up and throw it away? ‬

‪Relationships are complicated, but the internet makes them (specifically breakups) a lot stranger to navigate. The thing about the internet is, everything pretty much stays where it is. It doesn’t go away just because time has passed. You can delete pictures, block them, take their name out of your bio, but your interactions can still resurface as a glaring reminder of how happy and in love you once were. And I’m not talking about Facebook or Snapchat memories (although those are a bitch too). I’m talking about how memes and articles get continually reused and passed around by pages, so a post you tagged your ex in 53 weeks ago while you were still together may pop up on your feed once in awhile.

‪You click on it and your seemingly ancient comment is deemed “most relevant,” and thus, is the first thing you see. It’s always cutesy, gushy posts for me. I tagged him or he tagged me and one of us replied with something equally gooey and sweet. We heart react each response in turn. His name, something I once loved to say, and his tiny little profile picture both make me want to throw my phone at the wall.‬

‪So, there it is. A little snapshot in time of when things were lighter and brighter and happier. Before things got bad. Before I lost something so genuine. So breath-taking and life-altering. So monumental.

‪Monumental—that is how I see it when I look back on it. Because of course I do—our relationships always seem like a much bigger deal than they are. To me, our love was huge. It took up so much space. As foolish and lame as it sounds, we always talked about how meant to be we were. About all the unlikely, unimaginable shit that had to happen for us to end up together. Our coupling was comprised of a thousand puzzle pieces that fell together at just the right time in order for us to become what we were. I won’t go into depth about our origin, but it was rough and wild and passionate. It was fast and hard, and if you blinked, you would have missed it; the bruises it left behind the only proof that it even occurred. It was blissful, but it was painful. It was a lot of things. He was a lot of things, to me. My lover and soulmate. My confidant and superhero. My partner in crime and absolute best friend. We had so much in common. We had so many of the same hopes, dreams, hobbies, morals, convictions. We had the same fire inside of us. We made so much sense on paper.

‪When he left me, I felt like I lost something big. Our love was meaningful to me, it was paramount. We had such an incredible, visceral connection. We opened ourselves up, raw and bleeding to each other. We showed off all the ugly, quiet, unlit parts of ourselves that no one speaks about. It’s an intimacy I feel like I’ll never be able to replicate. ‬

‪Time is funny. I spend a lot of it looking back—it’s easy to do that. It’s all right there. Tangible, palpable. If you open your mouth, you can almost taste it.