life as poems 'n letters

I wasn’t waiting.

I want to make that clear.

I did not spend the past decade waiting, hoping for some big reunion, keeping a place in my heart open for someone who had already departed. I moved on. I lived. I grew. I loved and I lost. I built myself into someone stronger, someone wiser, someone who had long ago made peace with the past.

But life is weird. It has a way of giving you people back when you didn’t think you’d ever get them back again.

I don’t know whether it was timing, fate, or just one of those unexplainable things that occur, but many years later, I was feeling something I never thought I’d feel once more. Love. Real, raw, messy, familiar—but new in its own right.

And for a second, it seemed like perhaps this was supposed to happen. Perhaps all the time spent apart, all the years spent becoming other people, had, in some way, brought us back to this place. Like the universe was going, see? Some things aren’t over yet.

But love—true, enduring love—requires something more than history. Requires something more than timing.

And what I discovered wasn’t the kind of love that lasts. It was the kind that makes you remember who you are. The kind that teaches you how much you’ve grown, how much you’ve learned, how much you’re worth.

Nope, I wasn’t holding my breath, waiting for the day for that grand return. But somehow, our lives crossed again. And for a moment, I allowed myself to believe. I allowed myself to feel.

And then, just as life brought him back to me, it revealed to me why it was never supposed to work.

Because love isn’t so much about the past. It’s about the now. It’s about who we are now, what we require now, and what we’re willing to offer now. And sometimes, regardless of how much you once meant to one another, the version of you that currently exist just don’t fit anymore.

So no, I wasn’t waiting.

But if I do ever look back, if I ever think about him, it won’t be with regret. It will be with thanks—for showing me that I am still capable of loving so deeply. That after all these years, my heart is still capable.

And that the right love—the kind that lasts—is still out there waiting for me.