I’m Not Going To Invalidate The Love We Had

I’m not going to invalidate the love we had.

What we had was calm, pure and innocent. The nights spent looking into each other’s eyes, the songs we sang to each other, the passing glances and discreet smiles, the long messages from you that I’d wake up to, the fights—the petty and the big ones (including the one that broke us up)—and the marathon chats that started with “What are you up to?” and ended with “I miss you” and “I love you.”

I’m not gonna say that what we had wasn’t love. It was love in its purest, most innocent form. It was love from what I know love was at that age. The kind of love that two young people can afford to give. The kind of love that yearns for each other’s touch but has no confidence in doing so. But that love was not a lasting one.

We both have so much growing and discovering to do. We have come far from who we were, and it’s a wonderful thing that taught us something about love—that it’s something we both can’t give fully if we’re two incomplete people or if we don’t love or know ourselves enough.

We cannot love someone sincerely if we don’t love ourselves enough.

We can blame each other for why our relationship fell apart—you can blame me for being overly emotional while I blame you for disappearing for days on end and coming back as if nothing had happened—but it’s not going to change anything, will it? We’ll still break up one way or another.

Let’s not taint the good memories we made with bad ones. What we had was good, but it wasn’t all that there is in love or in loving someone. You sing to someone else now while I find my comfort in someone else’s arms. You and I are two great people, but we’re just not great together.