The High of Love

Written on May 1st, 2023

When I met him, I was so happy I could die. If there was love, I had felt it. There was nothing more left for me to experience.

He was not my first or second, yet I’d never known love before him. Love that washes over you like an ocean. All the things you never knew about yourself. All that you thought was important.

In love I was high. No bitterness. No regrets.

All struggles of the past I accepted as necessary in a life path that had led to him.

I felt free. I was at peace.

This love, I thought, would never fade. How could I ever be with anyone else when I had known love from him?

Nevertheless.

Love is a high and it subsides.

… 

If love was a drug, I was always aware of the sobriety; always there. Lurking in the shadows.

I kept telling him. You will not feel this way forever.

To my eyes he was naive. He didn’t know that the excitement couldn’t last forever. Nor had he felt the pain of watching what once was love fade away.

Did I want to warn him, or did I want to warn myself?

I wonder if my fear aged this perfect love of ours prematurely. Like a flower plucked too early. Before it had time to blossom.

Had I robbed us of what could have been?

…

Am I still wasting our time by stubbornly wishing it to be? Even now, after the all the damage?

In my mind I’ve left him a thousand times. He’s still here, yet I mourn a love long dead.

Will the sorrow ever go away?