Maybe They Don’t Have To Be ‘The One’ To Be A Great Love

There’s something so needlessly beautiful about this.

It’s like we’re creating something meant to be destroyed. Like a firecracker, or a box of matches, or an Advil. Something that will not last, but is still something that needs to be created nonetheless because it improves our lives so much.

I am not Taylor Swift. I don’t think we’ll go down in flames. If anything, when this ends, it will be painful. It will be sad. But you will not throw things at me and I will not wreck your car and we will be perfectly fine at the end.

I am twenty and you are twenty-one. The chances of this lasting for more than six months are slim, the chances of this lasting for a year are slimmer, and the chances of us marrying are null. I don’t care how many graduates from our school wed. I will not marry you and we will not marry me. We won’t spend our lives together.

We do not share everything with each other. I will never show you my writing. I will never tell you about the people I see when I am not with you, hundreds of miles away. You will never tell me about your past. You will never tell me about your depression, and your paranoia, and the things that I have seen rather than heard about. You don’t understand why I only talk about the same three things, why I talk only about stress and people and making out. I don’t understand why you keep showing me your favorite television shows and why you want to talk or stop and talk rather than go on dates or buy me dinner.

You and I aren’t perfect, even now. You say I don’t open up. And I say that you don’t prioritize me. You say that I hate myself. I say that you don’t understand me, and you don’t try to. You say that I drink too much and I say that you smoke too much and together, we are not perfect, we are not whole, we are nothing special. Some days it’s like we’re on opposite wavelengths.

But I love you all the same, in spite of all of this and perhaps because of it. You are the first person I have dated who has actually treated me like a person, like someone who is worth dating. You are the first person I have dated who asks me about the things I love and the people I am friends with and the books I read and the thoughts I think. And I love the way you treat me. I feel like I’m finally learning the way I should be treated, the way I should be thought of.

And I love you.

This isn’t true love. This will not last forever.

You will move on and I will move on and neither of us will care about each other. But we’ll never forget each other. This is the first real relationship of my life. We’re learning how to love. Together.

And maybe that’s enough for now.