For a real-life love story read here: How She Rediscovered Love with Coffee & Coronavirus.

Please don’t come here with your wary, doubtful, guarded heart, asking questions to see if I’ll pass your impossibly challenging tests.

I’m no longer interested in your vagueness and your fickle “maybes.” And I’ve given up hoping for the faint possibility of this “one day…” you speak of that, after all these years, still hasn’t appeared. 

Please don’t tell me you have to “think about it” anymore.

I’m done with this waiting, this wondering. I’m done focusing on our potential.

You’re no longer welcome to lace up your muddy boots and tread carelessly through me as you come and go.

I’m tired. I’m frustrated. And my fractured rib cage is reluctantly closing its storm-beaten doors.

But first, please tell me why you reach for me with hands half full of promise and half full of disdain?

Why speak my name like I mean so much more to you than I do?

You think you love me, you say, with a hushed tone—one filled with damning reservations, momentary desire and superficial expectations. Your armor is always on, your reflexes always on guard and your weapons raised and ready to whisk your tentatively-offered sentiments away.

So, I am asking you to take your indecisive love and kindly (and decisively) leave.

We both know that if you stay, I will always be weak and tangled in your finely-spun web. I will always ache for the words I long to hear, the ones that make you want to slowly crawl through the infernos of hell.

I have yearned for you to break open, to show your vulnerability. I have patiently waited and surrendered and tried so damn hard to keep enough faith burning for us both.

But I also know my unrealistic expectations are causing me to struggle and suffer. And yes, I’m aware that it is my wounded, beaten, fractured, messy, loving heart that has caused me to linger with you for far too long.

You were a lesson—vital, but excruciating. You were a sharp stick that relentlessly and cruelly prodded, opening scars, forcing them to bleed so they could feel just a little more pain.

And I needed you.

You were here to make me realise that I am worth so much more than deliberations, to make me see that I should never have allowed myself to be your hard-to-make choice. If you have to consider whether I’m an option, save yourself the time and walk freely by.

I will not chase or beg for your return. I will not waste time trying to convince you of what you already know deep down.

I have already outstayed my welcome, foolishly watching history repeat itself as you ignored, rejected and abandoned me to suit your ever-changing needs.

I am not going to battle through the carnage just so you will let me love you, and I’m not going to fight to coerce you into showing that you care.

Because in your eyes, trying hard doesn’t equal love. You think it’s crazy if someone loves consistently, even if they’re not loved the same way in return.

But for me, this was real, rare and unique. And now it has come to a silent and unavoidable end.

I have always been terrified to let you go—as I know this unforgettable love won’t fade—but holding on is harder.

I may never fill this void, but it is far emptier to stay when love feels more like war.

Author: Alex Myles

Image: Ian Schneider/Unsplash

Editor: Nicole Cameron