I Hope Next Time Our Love Will Be Different

I want to go back to the time when nothing you did made any sense; all the sentences I waited for you to finish remained incomplete. The twinkle in your eyes turned out to be something I imagined but, when you looked at me and smiled, everything fell into place.

I want to go back playing the game where you told me you loved me.

When your hands were swearing to protect me but your eyes teased me not to bet on it and the time when your skin burned my skin with hunger but your lips reminded me not to get used to it. I want to go back to those days when you were a peaceful heaven in my heart but burned like hell in my mind. I want to go back to the days when I have never felt more alive.  

I want to play the guessing game where your every move and breath made me question if I was nothing, maybe something or potentially everything. I want to play the guessing game where I would try to find clues in your messages, read your mind when your words weren’t enough and make-up answers to problems that only existed in my head but were real in my heart.   

At 1 AM, I want my stomach to tighten with the pain of you loving someone else the way I always pictured you loving me. I want my stomach to tighten with the sickness of knowing that your heart was broken and I will never be the girl who you wanted to heal it. And I want to go back to the nights when I wasn’t sure if the 1 AM calls would end with your “goodbyes” leaving a hole in my heart and how that never stopped your “hellos” from the exploding butterflies that would fill up my stomach.

I want to go back to the days when everyone told me that you were ordinary but I knew you were different.

I want to play the waiting game when I would count the hours wondering when you were going to make your next move. Those were the hours I would recall us watching the sunset and wishing that it would stay up just a bit longer and wishing it wouldn’t set at all because I wanted us to stay this way forever. This is the game I want to play again, the anticipation, the mystery, and the thrill of never really knowing if, in fact, we are even playing the same game.

But I hope we never play that game because I lost. I sacrificed myself and everything that was good about me so I can mold into what I thought would be perfect for you. I lost my confidence. Every time I look at myself the only thing I see is everything that you didn’t want and everything I couldn’t be.

To be honest, I am not the only one who lost. You lost big time, and for that, I will always feel a little sorry. I could have truly given you everything but sadly, you couldn’t even give me a chance.

You couldn’t give me the chance to prove to you how I would always treat you right and love you in a way you could never love me. How I wouldn’t dream of breaking your heart the way the person who still has your heart broke it and how to this day, I am beyond belief that she couldn’t find in you what I have always so clearly seen.

I’m glad you didn’t let me love you. I would have given you everything you didn’t deserve. And I’m glad you saved me from making the huge mistake of letting me believe I deserved someone who absolutely did not deserve me.   

What I didn’t realize was that in a way, you did me give me a chance after all. You gave me the chance not to be with someone who didn’t see any value in me. You gave me the chance not to be with someone who refused to take a chance to be with me. And with that, you gave me the chance to decide once and for all if you were worth fighting for. And how quickly I knew the answer when you did nothing to fight for me.

I hope if we meet again that things will be different. I hope you learn to say “I love you” after you know what love means and not what you think it means. I hope next time you learn to appreciate what another person is willing to bring to the table and that you learn to give back instead of taking everything. I hope that by that time, you will have stopped taking people for granted and start treating those who are important to you like they matter instead of treating them like they are everybody else.

Somewhere in the future, I am almost certain our paths will cross again. And when it does, I want to see a person who, when he gets close, there will be nothing in the world that will keep him from getting closer. If I ever see you again, I want to see a man who is not afraid of listening to his heart instead of his mind and a man who is not afraid to say that he is afraid instead of a boy who keeps running away.

I don’t know if you might even try to ask me for another chance, a fresh start and a promise to never again break my heart more than you already have. If you do, I hope next time things will be different. I hope next time, I can finally say “no.” Even as you keep trying to tell me that you have changed and even as much as I want to believe it to be true.

Because next time, I want things to be so different that at last, I will listen to everyone when they kept telling me that people like you will always stay the same.