Our Love Story: The Final Chapter

This is the part I honestly thought I would never have to write.

This is the part that I believed, truly, would never come.

But it has.

Bill and I broke up.

Again, and I think now for the last time.

He came to my house, always a gentlemen, not making me come to him and not doing it over the phone, and he asked me, as kindly as possible, to let him go.

We held each other for a long time.

We said goodbye in as many different ways as we could think of.

And we made promises to stay best friends.

Because in the end, he's always been my best friend.

He's been the person who understood me. Who laughed at my jokes, and knew when my jokes were really masking something deeper, something I couldn't say, and in those times, he held me. He's the person who was always there. For drinks, for support, for help and for countless other things. And while it lasted, he gave me a deep and beautiful love, that I will not forget.

Not in this life, or the next.

He taught me that true love is possible, even if it doesn't last forever.

It can move you, it can heal you, and it can awaken in you a capacity for forgiveness and acceptance and hope that you didn't think you had.

For that, I am forever grateful.

After a lot of tears, and even some laughs, and so many hugs, I walked him to his car.

I tried to be brave and not cry when I said goodbye, and I stood on the corner and waived as he drove away.

I made myself stay upright until he turned the corner and disappeared, and then I hit my knees and cried on the sidewalk. No, I wept.

I wept for all the things I thought we would have someday together.

I wept for all the places we won't see together, and all the things we never got to do.

All the things I never got to say.

All the goodnights and good mornings and hello kisses we never got to share.

I wept because he's always been mine, in one form or another, and now I have to let him go, and accept that at some point he will become someone else's. And when that happens I'll know that that person is living the life I wasn't able to have. The life I never made it to because I couldn't stop tearing this apart. No matter how badly I wanted it.

After I stopped crying I sat in my driveway and smoked my last cigarette, staring at the street he'd just drove away on, and tried not to hope that he'd come speeding back, saying he'd made an awful mistake and he couldn't let me go.

I made myself get up and go inside.

I let myself say goodbye to him one last time in a text, and then I forced myself to sleep.

Maybe it doesn't seem like this chapter should be part of our love story, but it is because I still consider our story a love story. We had it great, and perfect for a while, but it wasn't built to last. Relationships that change your life, and change you as person, don't come a long every day.

What no one ever tells you is they also don't always last forever.

But they were still real.

It was still love, and it's still a love story even if it ends without a happily ever after. 

And I am so glad that I got to live that kind of love for the time that I did.

And maybe now we have a new future ahead of us, and we'll finally find the right place for us in each other's lives.

Whatever role we're meant to play for each other, I have hope that we'll find it.

And I am grateful for every single second I had as his girl.

Every moment that I possessed his heart, and he possessed all of me. 

But now it's time to say goodbye to that chapter of our lives together.

Where we go from here, I don't know.

Hopefully toward an amazing friendship.

Beyond that, there is only what I wish for, and whatever it is we're meant for.