I loved you.

I loved you with a fierceness I can’t quite describe.

You’re the one, the one that I never stopped loving.  I’m convinced that you’re the reason all of my relationships since you have failed.  How could I truly give myself to someone else while my Heart still belonged to you?

All these years later…

Over time, the details of you… of us…. have gotten blurry.  Many of the specifics have faded away.  And as much as I’ve wished my love for you would do the same, it hasn’t.  You wouldn’t let me go.  You wouldn’t release me.  I’ve been your captive.

Despite the passage of time, there are some things about you that will be forever imprinted on my soul… things I know I’ll carry with me wherever I end up after the last chapter of this life has closed.  Perhaps, memories I’ll have carved into the very essence of my being, memories that will come shooting to the surface in some other space and time where we will inevitably reunite.

Those two memories, vague, and yet so clear to me.  The way you looked at me.  And the way you made me feel.

Nobody before you, and nobody since you, has looked at me the way you did.  A look that permeated my soul with an intensity that sent my heart racing.  A look that communicated love.  A look that, when just given as a glance across a crowded room, made me feel more loved and cared for than all of the words and actions of every lover I’ve had since you –combined.

It was a look that took my breath away… one I hoped I’d get to spend the rest of my life bathing in.

Nobody since you has made me feel the way you did.  Never before, and never since, have I felt the overwhelming sense of protection that I felt with you.  When I was with you, I knew that nobody – nobody – was going to fuck with me.  Ever.  You knew I could take care of myself.  You never patronized me or hovered.  But I knew that if I ever needed your help in any way, all I had to do was whisper for you.

The only thing that really needed protected was my heart.

Ah, to love without abandon.  To be able to carelessly shove all my chips into the center of the table without even looking at my cards.  Never before you, and most certainly never since, have I been able to do that.

I was burned, keeper of my heart.  You burned me.  You flung the first speck of dirt upon my pure, naïve, carefree heart.  I was forever changed by you.  I write this not in hopes of hurting you in any way (I would never want to hurt you), but to help you understand how you affected me.  In a moment – a single moment – I plummeted from dreaming of spending my life soaking in your love… to knowing we could not be together.  My heart… was crushed.

During the years since the dissolution of us, we have connected four times.  Two years after the breakup, I met you at one of our old favorite places.  We had a drink and then sat in your truck afterwards, talking and absorbing the electricity that passed between us.  I wanted to run back into your arms, but I didn’t.

Seeing you that first time after our breakup sent shockwaves through me.  It made my heart ache.  I longed for you but I knew we could not be together.

I did not hear from you again until several years later.  You wrote me a letter.  An actual letter, postmarked and everything.  It was, and remains, one of the most touching letters I’ve ever read.  It made me cry.  I held it to my face and smelled it, hoping I could catch your scent, or somehow feel your presence through that folded piece of notebook paper.

Hearing from you out of nowhere hit me like a bolt of lightning.  All the emotions associated with you came rushing back.  The love.  The passion.  The hurt.  The loss.

I wrote you back and you replied quickly.  And then I did not reply again.  I knew I shouldn’t.

About three years later, you appeared again.  This time through social media.  This time, we talked on the phone.  We spent hours catching up.  We even discussed getting together.

And then, just as quickly as you reemerged into my life… you disappeared.  That was about three years ago.

Last week, you appeared again.  This time, as a comment in one of my posts.  You left your number and asked me to call you.

As soon as I saw it, I felt that old, familiar tingle down my spine.  I felt the wave of emotions come rushing over me.  Powerless against it… I sent you a text.

We’ve spent the last few days catching up over the phone.  I was unable to answer a couple times… but I saved the voicemails from you.  One of them in particular, overwhelms me.  It’s so simple, just you saying you hoped I wasn’t asleep and to call you back if I could.

The part that got me was your goodbye.  “Okay babe.  Bye.”  Words that look so average and that are probably communicated by millions of people every day.  But coming from you, that old familiar goodbye, seems to transport me back in time.

I worry you will disappear again.  I don’t know what any of this means, but I do believe this is part of the Venus retrograde experience for us both.  A blast from the past.  A review of the mistakes or lessons, maybe.

Or perhaps, it is to remind me what love feels like.  To help me remember that there was a time, if only for a moment, that I got to savor something real… the type of love I’ve found myself longing for all the years since you were mine.

I don’t have the answers.  But you know?  I feel incredibly blessed to have experienced that type of powerful connection with someone.  If I never experience it again, I accept that.  I hope I never forget the way you looked at me, or the way you made me feel.

Somehow, I don’t think I ever could.

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