What She Knows
pt.1
The further I venture into starting over, the further I feel from you, like each hightide washes another part of you off of me and pulls you to sea. Falling in love is the biggest risk because starting over after love is one of the harder things in life. It is one of the pains that dig at your perseverance and slowly digest you until you feel defeated. The threat of beginning all over again after love has the power to control someone, mute them, dull their desire to live, and strip them of wanting to be something to someone else ever again. Everything you have made of yourself disappears with the wind when you lose the person you love, and the reality of putting yourself back together after can drain a person of their spark.
The longer I live after you, the lonelier I feel from my own identity. As if every rainfall washes something about you off of me, I am slowly losing the recognition of the girl who loved you. When shattered into a million pieces, it is natural to fall back on the simple habits you used to love, the people who raised you, and the interests that kept your fire lit. But what does one do when loving someone else intertwined with every part of their identity? What do I do now that loving you has only left me with imposter syndrome?
To let go a thousand times in a thousand different ways is not enough to ever forget someone. However, I spend every day picking up a piece of myself that I lost, and I find a way to fit it into my new life, into who I am. I let myself digest everything she knows about you, and I let it seep into the deepest corners of my mind. All the times I have chosen to love and signed up to start over have given me the foundational knowledge and strength that holds all of my new memories at the forefront of my heart and mind. Every hightide untangles you from my identity, but the way you changed me will never let me drift to sea. Each rainfall washes a part of my love for you off my shoulders, only to give space to carry the new love of something else. After all, as tired as I may be, I start over in hopes of falling in love all over again.
When you break up, graduate, start a new job, or move to a new city, you are sacrificing comfort to make room for the joys of life and the great loves; you are starting over. After something or someone, you can feel so incredibly lost, like a vine that no longer has branches to grow on, sitting there curled around only crisp air. When you give up something so grand and so big, you feel like a shell of who you once were. When I am feeling defeated about starting over, I think of all the things she knows. What does the girl who got me here know?
I let your favorite color flow to the back of my mind as I fill that space with learning a new song on the piano. I let the craving to call you subside as I take myself on my favorite hike. I find myself not counting down the days until your birthday but counting down the days to my own. As you find your spot in my past, I find space to fill my future. Starting over can be patient, kind, and special; you must remind yourself of what you know. You taught me so much about myself, and just because the thought of you has dissipated with the ebbs and flows of starting over, it does not mean the feelings you left me with will ever fade. I am changed but not lost anymore. What I know will keep my identity afloat while I begin again. I can find myself all over again and discover the girl that comes after you. To fall in love with who she becomes.