What They Don’t Tell You About Falling in Love
Our anniversary just passed. It would've been 5 years. I spent the day torn between wishing we had made it and knowing we would have been miserable if we did.
Sometimes, I wonder if you'd recognize me. If I've changed so much that I'd feel like a stranger. When I look in the mirror, I don't see the person that I once was, the person who you were with.
It's been almost 2 years since I decided to say goodbye to our Forever. I've spent that time carving a whole new future for myself. Now, I'm a person I never thought I had the potential of becoming back when I'd spend my days crying in your arms, feeling absurdly lost.
I finally found myself and the tragic part about it all is that I both couldn't have done it without you and I couldn't have done it without leaving you.
You helped me uncover the trauma I carried that was holding me back. You spent every day trying to heal me, aiming to understand the demons I was fighting. You showed me what it felt like to be loved unconditionally and helped me learn to accept nothing less for myself.
You gave me the courage to put myself first. Then, I put myself first over Our Love.
It wasn't because I didn't love you. It's not that you treated me poorly or that you weren't everything that I had ever asked for. Nothing either of us did doomed us for failure.
But, they didn't tell us not to lead with our egos. They didn't warn me against looking for my prince charming, so when I met you, that's who I thought you were: My Prince Charming.
And so, as we unpacked and we undid damage, I began to see you as my savior. You were the man God sent into my life to save me from being trapped in the tower.
That's a lot of pressure to put on an 18-year-old boy. One that had no idea what he was getting himself into when he decided to fall in love with me.
Because they never told you about the trials you'll face when you go looking for a Damsel in Distress.
See, back when I first met you, I didn't care that you were a devout Catholic and I was raised Muslim. I didn't care that you grew up with white privilege but society treated my kind like a stain in human history. I didn't see the issue with your parents having an American education and mine barely surviving the aftermath of a Civil War.
I didn't think any of those things mattered when it came to us. And it didn't. It didn't matter for long enough that it gave me the chance to fall in love with you. That's when the danger crept into our relationship.
Falling in love put a mirror to the way I saw myself. It uncovered demons I didn't know I had. Once revealed, there was no hiding from them. I became depressed. Our entire relationship became about breathing life back into my body.
I wanted to be healed by your love, I did. But, the more we tried, the more I began to realize your love couldn't help me here. The only remedy was to face my demons. There was a war ahead waiting for me that I couldn't make you a casualty of.
Had you joined me in battle, we would have had endless fights between our families, between us. Our lives would be spent with me constantly defending why things couldn't be more simple.
Because first-generation, muslim, brown girls don't get the luxury of simple. We have the weight of unfathomable generational trauma sitting on our shoulders.
And after spending 3 years trying to get you to understand that, I finally realized there's no way a white boy from Long Island with American roots that's generations deep could ever get what it's like to be me.
Had we stayed together, the resentment was destined to grow. Our only future was one where we spent the entire relationship fighting to be able to love each other. And that's not a love I would wish for either of us.
But, I wish they told me that before I decided to take the leap. Had I been more prepared, I would have understood that my first love was never going to be about the other person.
Falling in love is about discovering more of yourself.
Through you, I uncovered what I really thought of myself; as a burden, worthless, a waste of space when things are not executed to perfection.
You helped me realize that I was so busy pouring out love for everyone else that none was left for me. Yet, every time I won some back, I handed it straight to you. I knew as long as you were in my life, I would keep handing all I had to give to you. So, I left.
Leaving you was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. But, it gave me the space to fill my tank back up. I'm whole again. Without you, I would never have even known that I was living in pieces to begin with.
So, thank you. Thank you for being the love that helped me discover who I am. Maybe Forever wasn't right for us, but I will never say that we weren't right for each other. Every second of our relationship was pivotal in getting me here.
Of course, there are times when I question my decision to leave you. You were everything every woman dreams of. Being loved by you was like a fairytale.
But, I'm not the type of girl who gets fairytale endings. I'm the girl who suits up for battle to change the world.
I know now that God didn't send you in my life to be my savior. He sent you to me to be my awakening. You see, we were always written in the stars. Just not in the way that we thought.
And they should've warned us about that when it came to falling in love.
PUSH THE CONVERSATION FORWARD
There’ll be some questions posted at the end of each written work. These questions are meant to push the conversation forward about the trials & tribulations of embracing your identity and how we should change the narrative to build a better society. Whether you answer these questions in the comments, on social media, to your friends and family, or just to yourself, their main purpose is to get you to think. How do you feel about the direction of the conversation? Your thoughts and opinions are pivotal in determining how you show up in the world. At The Hustle Legacy, it’s all about exercising using your voice to learn how to better embrace your identity. I hope you’ll join me in using your voice today.
Questions for This Article
Has your identity or background ever gotten in the way of being with the one that you love? Did you decide to walk away or stay? What factors played a part in making that decision?
What are you looking for in your significant other? A savior? Your awakening? Something completely different from what was mentioned in this article? What does having a significant other mean in your life?
What was it like reading a letter addressed to my ex? Did it feel like you were intruding on a personal conversation? Did it allow you to connect on a more deeper and emotional level? Let me know what the experience of reading this article was like for you.
