Introduction
“The course of true love never did run smooth.” -William Shakespeare
My lips have been kissed. My body has been touched. I have craved attention. And my heart has felt... something. That is what every person wants ideally, is it not? To be kissed, touched, attended to, and to feel something? But with him, it wasn’t just something; it became my everything. Everything before him was not real and so I love him because he was the realist thing I knew. He was as real as my own heart beating in my chest. With Elliot, his kiss was an imprint on my heart. His hands on my body were a shield from my past. His attention was a mirrored reflection of who I wanted to be, and what he made me feel was... home. All of a sudden, my future became clear. It was no longer a blur of faded pictures or what if’s.
Then just like that, it was taken from me. It was like I got to see my future in a crystal ball and suddenly the smoke clouded it all as if to say ‘ha, not yet’. It was like a tease. For a split second, I felt whole. I felt found. I felt complete. I stopped looking; stopped running when I found him. I didn’t need to look anymore because I found it all with him. I didn’t need to run because my running was to find love. But now... it has been 10 months since I have seen him, and at one point where I felt lost in him, I suddenly feel a new kind of ‘lost’. I feel lost in my own head. I feel disconnected with my heart because it no longer only belongs to me. I used to feel lost within myself. And then I felt lost with him. And so, now, I find myself looking for not anyone, but him, in others in order to find myself. But they are not him, ever.
And so another question surfaces: to what extent do you let yourself get lost in it all? In love. In your person? Is there even an option? I don’t know how not to get lost in the memory and feeling of the person that I gave so much to and got so much in return from. I feel lost to the point I don’t think my life could ever actually be the same as it once was.
Elliot marked a before and after in my life and I don’t think I could actually go back to who I was. Why? Because I don’t even know who that girl is anymore. How would I find her even if I wanted to, and if I could, would I even want to? I don’t know. Is that a flaw in the making of the human race? I don’t know what exactly happened along the way... but suddenly and inexplicably, I have become someone else. In the memory of who I was when I was with him and the effect of who he made me want to be after meeting him and when being with him. Maybe it is good to be lost, because I don’t know if I would want to find my old self. Somehow I find that though I am now living this new type of ‘lost’, I almost feel more ‘me’ than ever before.
So maybe finding love, and losing love has made me actually find myself. Or maybe, it was just putting me in the position to find myself, so I can then find him again. Regardless, I’ve loved and I’ve lost. Somehow in a blink of an eye.
