I use to tell myself that the only man that I would ever love would be my soulmate. I mean, we’re all destined for one right? I mean how hard can it be? I’d meet this guy and I would know by instinct because he would give me that tingly feeling in the pit of my stomach and in my mind and heart, as we look each other in the eyes, I’ll know that life could never be the same again because now that he’s here; I’ll realize that life was in black and white until he showed up…
I believed that he would make me feel such a way that no other man could or ever would be able to. I met the man of my dreams when I was 10 years old.
I saw him and suddenly my heart stopped. For a split second I saw our lives together flashed before my eyes and right then and there I knew that we were meant to be…that we’d live happily ever after.
That’s how all the fairytales ended anyway.
I told myself that this was destiny, people spend years and years in unhappy relationships with persons they aren’t meant to be with but I was lucky-because I didn’t even have to go and search, he was there…my next door neighbour. Things didn’t really progress until we were a little older but I was certain that this was it, I mean how could you love someone so deeply and it’s not meant to be?
But he was just a boy and I just a girl, I placed him on a pedestal when he was just trying to find himself and I blame myself for falling so deeply with a fantasy rather than what was right in front of me.
They say the first cut is the deepest, but I learned that you must not play with fire because that spark I felt for my first love had turned into a huge flame and it burned me so badly, I thought that I would never recover from that pain. I thought that I could never love again because I had given him everything that I had and now I had nothing. I was a mere resemblance of a person but was hollow and empty inside.
Of course, as life would have it, I fell in love again. This time, I said it was real. I was mature, he loved me back (a pre-requisite I realized was needed to have a relationship) and once again he gave me that butterfly feeling, it wasn’t perfect but it was real and I could have lived with it. He thought me that soulmates were something that Disney pitched in their movies and while it was cute- it was a smokescreen. I learned that a real relationship was filled with emotional roller coaster rides and the higher you go, the harder the fall. I thought that the more that you argued- it meant that you really loved the person. When the relationship turned toxic and he began to emotionally manipulate me and verbally abuse me…I stayed because this love was real and in life, you can’t get everything. I had someone who said he loved me and no matter how much we fought…he wouldn’t leave me.
As life would have it again, I was wrong and the relationship went through a tragic death.
Better “it” than me.
“Is something wrong with me?” I often asked. It seemed as though I loved with my all but it was never enough.
Memoirs of Aheala 