I still feel the same old ache in my heart.
Four years, five…sometimes the dates felt as blurry as the edges of a long-forgotten dream. Yet, his name remained etched in the quiet spaces of my mind, a lingering question mark.
We were young back then.
Fiery and foolish – our love burned with the intensity of a wildfire, messy and uncontrolled.
Maybe that’s why some embers have refused to die, despite the distance and life’s torrential downpours.
Looking back, the perfection was never the point.
It was that raw connection – the feeling of being truly seen for the first time. Two souls, fumbling in the dark, swearing we’d found the guiding light.
Time has changed us both.
We’ve both tasted different loves, worn different masks, perhaps reinvented parts of ourselves to fill in the cracks created by our youthful mistakes. They say if we met now, we’d be strangers in vaguely familiar skin, the years obscuring the faces we once knew better than our own.
Even so, I sometimes catch myself staring out a rain-streaked window, wondering about his smile, and the way his eyes crinkled with laughter.
I tell myself it’s the memory I miss, not the man, but the line blurs in a way that makes my heart twist uncomfortably.
We still keep in touch – a digital tether to a past we’re both hesitant to let go of completely.
Maybe there’s a flicker of the old “what-if” nestled deep down, or maybe it’s just the bittersweet sting of a first love lost too soon.
There’s a peculiar comfort in his familiar updates and our occasional check-ins.
Like flipping through an old photo album, a bittersweet nostalgia washes over me, a reminder of that girl who loved with reckless abandon.
Logically, I know this isn’t some romantic destiny waiting to be rekindled. Life is far too complicated for those simple fairy tales.
Yet, the truth is, sometimes a part of me will always hold a soft spot for the boy with the wild heart and the gentle touch.
It’s woven into the fabric of who I am, a bittersweet note in the symphony of my experiences. And perhaps that’s okay.
Maybe some loves aren’t meant to last forever.
They exist to shape us, crack us open, and prepare us for the journeys that truly lie ahead.
Even though it’s over, there’s still something tender about those memories. They remind me of a time when we were young and full of life.