I can't tell you how many times I've thought to myself how pathetic I must be in the last two months. Pathetic! Constant ups and downs of missing someone who won't even acknowledge me, who didn't even value me enough to dignify me with a face-to-face conversation about the end of our relationship. I've missed that guy so much and it has felt pathetic. Why do I miss him? I have trouble letting go.
Even amongst feelings of anger and half-joking comments to my friends about how I'd like to key his car, I missed him. A lot. For weeks I've woken up with him as the first thought in my head, several of those times starting my day with a cry because this is what it is and there's not a damn thing I can do. I cared for someone and I miss him, and that hurts.
It's a familiar process, even though it's a different relationship than my last. The other one only just stopped hurting, it seems, but otherwise still feels fresh so I can't help but note similarities in processing another chance at love lost. See I thought after my first relationship I'd never feel excited or passionate about another man. I'm a loyal person, so I thought no one else would make me feel that way, could be that comfortable and easy. I thought I'd always feel like he was missing from my life. And for a long several months it did. But even after the dust fully settled, and I'd even moved on and been hurt by another, I realized I still love him. I'm not pining, I have no desire to pursue anything, but I still care.
I noticed it a time or two over the last year, and figured it was just that not enough time had passed. Especially before having another relationship, I thought I just hadn't fully found a way to move on. While that's partially true, the attachment was real and the separation painful, felt unnatural. And that's where I came to realize something: I was wrong when I thought I'd never feel a strong connection and love again, as if I thought I'd spent what I had to give. I wouldn't recommend trying to love someone romantically more than once (I hope, if anyone else, it's only one more) because it wears on the heart, but it can be done.
Just in this past week I started to feel normal again, not like I'd forever wake up each morning and cry, prying myself out of bed. The strange thing is that even while starting to feel normal and not broken, I still miss him. I still pray for him (nearly the only prayer I can muster, lately). I still just want to sit on his couch and listen to music and talk – and that thought still makes me tear up. Even though I'm starting to heal, still...
What I learned is that love isn't meant to be a passing thing, which is why ending a relationship that had it is so very painful. The love continues to persist in you without its object. Hence grief commonly becomes a companion. Painfully it doesn't displace love. But neither did loving once already inhibit me from it again. The beautiful, hopeful thing is that it's not all used up; I have not run out of love. Same in romantic relationships as with friendships long gone, the love leftover doesn't keep us from finding that there's more to be had and more to be given.
And the stuff that remains, it's okay.
