So close to forever

I remember the exact moment she came back into my life. It was December three years ago. I remember where I sat and the smile that spread across my face. I remember the warmth that suddenly coursed through me even though my body was trembling with cold. 

I loved that girl with such beautiful hues — words dipped in aching, gasping, glorious color and spread across the widest canvas. Perhaps I got too involved, but love is an involving emotion. In all of my heart-pounding feelings, did I betray myself and create a love that didn't exist?

I lost her an unspeakable number of times. I lost her every moment of every day and every night with every heartbeat after she left. Every day and week and month that went by and she was silent, that loss penetrated deeper in my bones. Still now, she is lost.

Love is perfect, though sometimes imperfectly found.


And, boy, did I love that girl. If I could do it again, I would, and a thousand times. If I had a thousand lives, I'd live them just to see her again, even for a moment, even if it meant losing her again all those times.

Three years ago she came back into my life. Two years ago she worried something would happen to me "so close to our forever." One year ago, she said she loved me and it was okay if we went slow to go fast later. This year, our December song is silent. This year, hope is gone.

Yes, we were so close to our forever. So many times we were close, and only to have it wrenched from us. There are words for that, but I can't embed them here. I don't know what is fair or right. I only know what I want, and what I want is gone. 

There is no balm. There is no bandage. There are no words. Nothing can assuage the pain. Nothing can bring her back. Stolen bread, they say, is sweet, and I want to steal her again and a thousand more times more as long as I live. I felt she was stolen from me, so it seemed fair to steal her back, but she is not to be stolen. She deserves better. She deserves to have a tower built around her so no one could ever steal her. And, indeed, she has, and built by her own hands.

What I wanted is gone, and I am not the same man I was. I'm more destitute than before, but richer in some ways too. What I needed was never there, but, nonetheless, I found what I was missing. Still, my heart will forever call out to that girl, no matter the hill or vale upon which I find myself. I want to turn to her there, to smile at her, to bring her with me wherever I go. But all I have are faded memories and a rusty mechanism still churning in my heart for her, too stubborn to relent. 

We were so close to our forever, it's true. And sometimes God uses the thing we love the most to teach us what we need to know the most. If God took her from me, I have no quarrel with Him. I know she is safe, if that is the case.

They say love is blind, but I saw her. I saw things she didn't want me to see. In the end, I saw the reasons she had for walking away, and I could only nod in sadness. Ours is a tragic love story, penetrated by the cruelest of realities, left to bleed out so far from any help. 

Did anyone but her and I know what bloomed between us? Did anyone else see it die like we did? Or did they just see the sadness in us and wonder? 

I will forever wander this earth searching for another like her and for our forever, though I know neither will be found.

You know, I wrote this, and then I thought I'm really coming from a place of scarcity here, and that's not only unbearably sad, but it's also not right. Christians have access to tremendous abundance. Jesus died so we would have life and have it more abundantly. So, I will allow myself to feel sad as long as I need to, but then I'll be done. It's safe to say I've reached my limit for romantic heartbreak.

Thank you for reading, and God bless.