DEAR FIRST LOVE

“Dear First Love,

Do you remember that? The feeling? That day? When you and the girls were in kitchen, the boys and I sat on the couch, catching the game. And in random instances, your eyes would meet mine. The room would fold back, and it would be just us two, the world disappearing. There was something intimate in the innocence of it, in the glances that no one else caught. In the fact that it was only us two who knew, who understood it. There was a depth to the words we did not say, a comfort in simply knowing. And in the months after you left, this is what I missed the most: that there was an intimacy we shared, that there was a world we had built in which no one else existed, a world that was ours. The day you left, you yanked your half of it, a gaping hole left where you used to be.

See, it was never that you left. I have always known that people leave as they see fit. Even on our happiest days, I always held room for your leaving, for the evanescence of what we had. But you were not people. You were you. The young lady with whom I so effortlessly fell in love. Who felt like home, like peace. Who could see the sadness in my eyes when I could not. Who randomly said, “I will take care of you and your heart.” The young lady who considered me, thought about me. And even though she was always free to leave had it all become something she did not want, she would do so with thoughtfulness.

It was always the way in which you left. The way you left like people. Your leaving was so unlike you. Unlike the person I knew. So unkind. Impatient. Uncharitable. So disingenuous in the way you had me hold on to hope you had long before let go of. There are layers to deceit, you see. Sometimes, we lie to ourselves so well that honesty to others is impossible. I wish you had been honest with yourself.

See, it was never that you left, but that you did not believe in me. In us. Remember when you The day you left, you said, “I do not want to make a decision I will regret in 5 years.” As though believing in us, believing in me was a gamble you could not afford. As though I were too big a risk. It puzzled me then how it was you, of all people, who had little faith in me. You, to whom I had shown myself whole. You, who knew me, really saw me. Who I had let in. I thought it unfair because in my seeing you, I saw not only what you were, but the person you could be, the person you wished to be. The person I cheered on you to be. How, then, was I not deserving of the same privilege, the same patience? It took months. But one day, I was glad that you left. Because amongst my fears, it is those who do not believe in my ability to become I am most afraid of.

I do not really remember the day you left. The fine details of it become hazier each day, like an image drawn in fading ink. But I remember that you did not look me in the eye. You darted your eyes this way and that. But never at me. Never into mine, as though afraid that I would see in your eyes the things you did not say. I remember that you grappled for words, that you said many half-baked reasons as to why, as though you made them up as you went along. I did not understand then why you left.

For a while, when people asked, I said, “It just didn’t work out.” Because that is what people say. And people are often content with vagueness, with partial truths. But I began to say that I did not know why because that was the full truth. I still truly do not know why. I wanted to understand. I searched for reason. In the conversation. In the encounters. And I found things I was bad at, things that I could have done better, reasons I might have caused you to leave. My imperfections laughed in my face. But I realize now that those who want to stay, stay- not because we are flawless or deserving, but because they want to, because people love despite, not because. Because love cannot be earned. Love cannot be deserved. That which must be worked for is not love.

You left because you did not want to stay.  And I do not know why. I never will, a truth I am now comfortable with. We have this image of closure. That it is loud. That conversations are had; reasons are laid bare before chapters are closed. That there are neat conclusions to our stories. But I have learnt of a closure that exists in the silences. In the goodbyes never spoken. In the questions left unanswered. In the moments unresolved. In the uncertainty. And with it, it was suddenly okay that you left.

See, First Love, they tell you about heartbreaks. That the pain subsides until it is only a dull ache. That the anger dies away. That the hurt fades, so you can no longer trace its outlines.  That you will tire of pondering the whys. But they do not tell you that there is a love that overstays its welcome, that lingers longer than you wish for it to.  That we are incapable of unloving when we have truly loved. We are taught to love or to hate; but not to unlove. And so, it lingers, hovers longer than everything else. And you will sit with it, unsure what to make of it, where to place it.  

And then someday, on a random afternoon, it takes the natural shape that all dead loves do. And all of this seizes to matter as much. That, First Love, is today.

Regards,

Home.”