Tag: unfolding

It’s so strange to read back on my writings from just a year ago. It feels like a story unfolding. It’s a story that I didn’t know would end how and when it did. And though I knew things were crumbling, I didn’t realize just how fragile it all was.

I didn’t ask for this ending. Some days I feel it isn’t truly one. But on most days I’m able to understand that love should flow easier than that. Love like that – though magnanimous in its essence – was still very human and very flawed. It wasn’t full-bodied love, not really, not in the end. It had barriers, compromises, long distance, and brokenness woven into its DNA. A love like that hollows you out in the best and worst ways. It provokes a force in you, simultaneously imbued with melancholy and healing. It was almost too much to bear.

And for that, the story had to play out as it did. Had to end as it did. It couldn’t have been any other way. I couldn’t have been better at holding on to it. No one could. Letting go means recognizing that the past could not have been any different than exactly how it happened.

This love was soft, powerful, tender and, ultimately, beautifully human and beautifully flawed. It was exactly what I needed to be who I am today.

(Funny enough, this perfectly captures the end of loving a person and a place.)

“You see love liberates. It doesn’t bind. Love says, ‘I love you. I love you if you’re in China. I love you if you’re across town. I love you if you’re in Harlem. I love you. I would like to be near you. I’d like to have your arms around me. I’d like to hear your voice in my ear. But that’s not possible now. So I love you. Go.’” – Dr. Maya Angelou