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Honestly, I still love you…but in a different way now.

Yes, there are random mornings when I still think about the way things were when we first met, the day when I first saw you smile, the evening walks we had after school, the first night we held hands, the awkward, but sweetest first kiss we shared, those moments when we both shared our passion for dancing.

Years passed and my story about my work began to be a bit uninteresting for you, same as your school rants to me. I was always tired from work, while you on the other hand, still needed to do some school stuff at night. Things got even worse—our schedules weren’t synched anymore and we had to eat alone most of the time. Moreover, we tended to fight a lot. It was obvious to me that the rhythm of the dance we once shared had gone off beat, too.

Then you dumped me….

Things did not turn out the way they should have. There was nothing more painful than dealing with a break-up we both knew was going to happen. We tried fixing our relationship, but the more we tried to reconcile, to push ourselves to be happy the way we were, the more we hurt ourselves.

Honestly, I thought about fixing our problem with your mom. I also thought about how my marriage proposal was going to be when everything was already solved. I pictured myself also waiting in front of the altar, watching you walk toward me. Everything was going to be magical, but the magic was slowly going out of our love, too.

It was never easy, but I am more than okay now—perfectly fine.

No, I wasn’t crying while writing this. I confess, it took me almost two years to learn the difference between being in love with you and actually loving you. Reality smashed me so hard. My heart was broken repeatedly, but our break-up taught me more than what I’ve learned in all my years in school.

I am one of those hopeless romantics who believe that everything will be fine as long as there is love. There were days when I’d still expected a text message from you, mornings when I’d still check your Facebook profile and evenings when I’d randomly scan our old pictures together. Society may have labeled us, men, as the unemotional or the hard-hearted ones, but believe me when I say it was never easy for me.

I even wished we could still be together. It took me almost two years to realize it was really over. Maybe it’s true that one day you’ll just wake up feeling better than before. No more hurt feelings. No more sleepless nights contemplating. Finally, I can say that I have moved on.

I still love you, but I’m not in love with you.

I have created a life for myself without you, and I am certainly happy with it. It took me so long to move forward and leave you in the past. It took me almost two years to be able to finally remove the thoughts that make me mourn. Honestly, I still love you, but I know that I am not in love with you anymore.

They say that when you are in love with someone, the tendency is to also fall out of love with them. In my case, I have not fallen out of love with you, but I just love you in a different way. I still love you because you were once the most precious person in my life. Eight years is still eight years. You will always have that special place in my heart.

But, I have stopped hoping that we can still be together. I’ve stopped dwelling in the past, but find ways to make myself better than before. I accepted the fact that the possibility of us in the future is never going to happen. You have your own life now, and I have mine. We are both happy now, so I believe there are good reasons why our long-term relationship didn’t work out the way it should have.

It is true that when you love someone, you never stop loving them. So, here I am, still loving you, but not in that way anymore.

I still love you, but I’m not in love with you anymore.

~

Author: Marvin Panganiban

Image: Author’s Own

Editor: Travis May