The Love You Didn't Choose
I was sitting right across a friend sipping coffee then she told me, “I think you like this guy.”
I cannot believe how much those six words will change my life forever.
I spent the entire evening crying, thinking “This is bad, I can’t have feelings for this guy. This is just not fair.”
I’m not crying because I can’t have feelings for this guy, but because in my experience, having feelings for a friend never turns out to be a good thing. And, I really love being his friend. I can’t not be his friend, he’s too important for me to screw it up.
Like a self-prophecy, I did screw it up. I didn’t know how to process this information well and I ended up distancing myself from him. It was a roller-coaster from then on.
Three years later, I’m sitting and writing this letter and my feelings only grew deeper and deeper. But, our friendship did not. We fell apart. Not knowing how to navigate through our own brokenness and having to have so much feelings. Is it one-way? He’s told me that there was a time that it wasn’t, but now it is.
The question I keep asking myself now is, “Am I choosing to stay here?”, I guess the answer will be both yes and no. A part of me would love to move forward and find another love, but a part of me also always longs for the love I found in him.
I can only describe it as having a world only the two of us know. When we’re in the same room, I can feel our connection seep through me. I know when he’s stepped into the room the moment his right foot hits the floor. When we’re apart, I almost kind of have a feeling that we still exist in the same space.
I have read a book that described love as something that both happens to you and something you decide upon. I think there’s so much dissonance in that statement, but it’s the perfect description of what I’m going through.
I hope that one day, I get to find the same kind of love. I hope the next guy who will find me, who will feel that love happened to him through me, will choose to have it with me as well.
And, to the guy who didn’t, know that my love for you has been one of the most genuine experience I’ve ever had. I hope that it is much an experience for you as it has been for me. I hope you also find a love you’d want to choose.