When I was heartbroken from N I religiously, each morning, read a blog where people submitted stories about love.  About love lost, found, renewed, dead, etc.  Love in different forms and so on.  I cried and smiled and lived through other people’s stories.  I’m not sure how it intrigued me so much when my broken heart crippled me. That was probably one of the most tumultuous times of my life.  I never once truly admitted how completely mangled my heart was.  Even on my personal writings I had a front, and I had new men in my life as well.

I was happy.  It was one of the best years of my life, but still more often than not, in the quiet times of the evening or late night, I felt terribly empty.  At this point you may smell a slight whiff of cliché.  But really I’m not saying this was something about N being my soulmate or something like that because honestly I don’t know.  I feel like we are meant for each other and perhaps I expected that from the beginning and that’s part of how this all happened.  Although life never appeared perfect, he was someone I could see a future with even then (which was extremely odd for me).  I could never picture it but things felt right with him… in a way that they never had with anyone else before.

I would get irritated with my lovers (as I could no longer deal with committing to a relationship) and my mind would always flash back to him. He was perfect for me.  Even when we were fighting he was perfect for me.  At the same time, even if we had made it through that summer, even if he hadn’t drifted off and I hadn’t I don’t think it would’ve worked out from there.  I think we each needed that time apart.  That time when you truly feel and know you’re without someone to realize how right we were together.  It was rock bottom.  No matter what there was no chance of it ever working out and no one had really, truly wronged the other.  We were finished mostly because of distance and the situation.

I never once let my mind even entertain the thought that there was a chance for us.  When he got in touch with me and seriously began talking to me I took it with a grain of salt—with the assumption he was messing with me.  It “entertained” me, and I read the texts out loud and joked with my friends.  I guess that really backfired on me, but I’m perfectly okay with it.

Now at this point, I just want to remember all of this.  For us (humans) things are more valuable when we know what it is like to be without them.  Therefore I don’t want to take our relationship for granted.  I know what it’s like to truly be without N.  To not have him returning to me (like he will after deployment), to be far away from him in a way that miles can’t measure, a way that’s much worse.  I want to keep this in mind always.  I never want a monotonous marriage in which there is an assumption that our relationship will always be there.  I mean we are beyond concrete, but I want to truly value every minute of our time together and always appreciate him for the wonderful person he is.

Advertisement