You can move on, but you can’t really unlove someone.
This is what I learned trying to rewrite poetry into lines and verses that didn’t sound like him and I. When I tried taking pictures down from my walls and deleting the words I had written… as if I could somehow erase the memories, make them less painful somehow.
But I didn’t want to.
See, I don’t think I can unlove him. Not yet. Not ever.
There’s something about falling for someone that changes the person you are. You learn the little quirks about yourself, the little things that make you tick, the little wants you have, the little ways you fall in love with yourself and another person. Simultaneously. Wonderfully.
I don’t know if there’s anything wrong with loving a person, even after they’re gone. Not in unhealthy ways, not in bad ways, not in ways that drag you down and keep you from finding something new, finding yourself again. But when I think about what I’ve loved and lost, who I’ve loved and lost, I don’t regret a thing.
And I can’t pretend I didn’t love him, didn’t love every kiss, every city we travelled to, every laugh we shared, every time our song played on the radio, or every stupid photo that’s still in the frames on my walls.
I don’t think I’ll ever unlove him, ever erase our memories, or find a place where he doesn’t exist, hasn’t existed before.
Yes, I will fall in love again. And yes, there will be a day when the love between him and I doesn’t cross my mind. When another’s arms around my shoulders are all I need, all I think about. When he becomes only the pictures in a photo album, a smile of remembrance that doesn’t make dizzy.
I will still love him, even then. But that will be the love we both lost.
And I’ll be okay with that.
-a.t // the love we both lost
