I've romantically loved two people in my life -- my first "partner," if you could call him that, and my husband.
The most emotional hurt I'd had in my life up until these last few months was with my first partner.
After spending a year "together" in a very fucked up relationship, he decided that he would "let" me be his girlfriend, and I was elated.
It lasted 24 hours before he took it back, and it felt like a boulder fell from the sky and crushed me.
I transferred to a college in another country to be with him, and after I graduated and moved back home, I cut him off completely. Blocked him on everything without warning him, so he couldn't convince me to change my mind like he had so many times in the past for so many things -- things I never thought I'd compromise on.
I knew our relationship was toxic for me, and I needed to move forward with my life, even though it was the hardest thing I'd ever had to do in my 21 years of life.
And I did move forward and move on, a tiny step at a time, until I was healed enough to find real love.
I did find real love, the kind that I'd always dreamed of. I met my husband a year after I graduated, and we were very much in love for a very long time.
Fast forward 17 years later, and I'm now no longer in love, and neither is he, at least not with me.
I'm not sure what I am when it comes to him, maybe just in hurt.
But I'm afraid that if it stops hurting that it will truly be over for me, and that is utterly and completely terrifying.
I want nothing more than to be in love again, to recapture the thing I lost because I was careless.
I want to be comforted, to be held, but when he holds me, it feels hollow.
It feels so strange that he is with me, but I desperately miss him -- the him and the me that we used to be.
I'm not sure who I'm going to be in 6 months, a year, beyond that.
I hope that she finds, or recaptures, love and happiness.
I might not feel like it sometimes right now, but she does deserve that.