You Will Always Be Part Of Me And I Am Finally Okay With That

I have tried to pretend for a long time that you never existed in my life.

Not to say it honestly worked. I’ve thought about you more times than I’d care to admit to most people. Sometimes something as simple as a song or an inside joke was enough to send me back to memories filled with you and your infectious laugh that kept me on edge. Some days your name was the only thing repeating itself inside my brain, the reason never making itself known.

Sometimes I would reach out to you, some days I would stubbornly refuse to acknowledge it was happening. You haven’t been a significant part of my life far too long now- why should I even entertain the thought of you? Why should I even consider contacting you in hopes to spark a conversation about the people we used to be, or the people we could’ve been if we hadn’t so easily let all the magic between us go?

I know that it doesn’t make sense to think about you after all this time. I have repeated this to myself hundreds of times. I have spent so long trying to force even the thought of you from my mind, your voice from my memory, the feeling you would stir inside of me from my bones. I have spent so much time trying to convince myself that you didn’t matter to me, that you didn’t impact me, that we never shared anything of significance.

Yet the truth is, I know you will always hold a part of me, whether I like it or not.

It’s the price I pay for being fully invested in the people I fall for- something that I don’t regret nor honestly want to change about myself. I am thankful for my ability to love intensely and deeply, to feel things in such a powerful way. I also have to remember that this comes with other effects as well- namely that even when you’re gone, pieces of me will leave with you. I’ll manage to fill those voids with the memory of your mouth on mine, the way you looked at me in such a way that felt like lightning was racing underneath my skin, the secrets you told me when it was late, and it felt like no one else in the world was listening. I never feel empty when someone I have fallen for walks away from me, but I also have to recognize that when you give yourself to people so profoundly and unashamedly, you cannot pretend that they no longer existed once they step out of the picture.

I also know that you most likely don’t think of me in the same ways that I think of you, though I would like to think so. The parts of me you hold may not even be apparent to you- things you’ve stored away like boxes in an attic, existing but collecting dust in a corner you rarely visit. I don’t hold any expectations for you to wrestle with our memories the way that I tend to do from time to time. If I am the only person who manages to keep our past alive inside of myself, then I have accepted that.

I think it’s finally time that I openly admit to myself that I can no longer pretend that you never made an impact on me. You were once the person I couldn’t stop thinking about, that I craved wanting to know, that I hoped would stick around to see what we made of all this feeling we shared. Yet that’s not the way our lives turned out, and while I have made peace with the idea that we may never come back together again, I also have to make peace with the thought that you will always be part of my memories and my stories for the rest of my days- and that this doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I can do everything I can to not let this become something negative and something to spend my days fighting against. I can learn how to accept you and everything you meant to me at one point without letting it consume me. I can admit that you will always be a part of me, and you’ll still hold part of me and that this doesn’t have to be something that ruins me.

Maybe one day, I won’t even find myself thinking about it as much anymore, and when those memories do reappear, I’ll find myself happy to know I cared for someone so much that they found a way to remain here.

Truthfully, when it’s all said and done, I can be okay with you remaining here.