I never thought I’d fall in love after the experiences that I’d had in my life. I decided to turn my back on love but it came to find me one last time. I wasn’t ready, it was unexpected and it was AMAZING all at once.

I was ready to explore this journey with (we’ll call him) Darren and I was excited for our future, a feeling that I hadn’t felt for some time. It really was as if all the planets had aligned and this overwhelming feeling that we were meant to be together. We both wanted to spend every minute together and it wasn’t long before we were giggling over our love for one another and planning a future together.

Any knob jockey that says that love happens over a period of time is thinking with their head and not their heart. Whilst I know it’s possible to fall in love over time, it abso-fucking-lutely is possible to fall in love with someone in the blink of an eye.

Love is completely nonsensical, it doesn’t play by rules, it’s completely unruly and that’s why we all crave this feeling and mostly welcome it into our hearts the day it comes knocking. There are love stories written and shared by many an aching heart, love songs sang from the depths of one soul and all because no one can explain it, it just simply is.

Anyway I digress. I wanted this feeling for so long that I didn’t know what to do with myself or what to do with it when it arrived. I did the normal thing of trying too hard and making an absolute fool of myself in the process but it didn’t matter. I no longer cared and I was happy to be a fool in love.

What I hadn’t considered were; circumstances beyond mine or Darren’s control. We both went into it blindly and fell into each other’s lives and arms lovingly but both with our own issues suddenly cracks started to show.

These cracks were like a delapedated home, that I was sure over time we could restore. I was in this for the long game and I was happy to be patient or so I thought.

I had many issues mostly to do with self-worth and insecurity but I knew this already and this was my moment to put all that I’d learned through; shamanic practises and vispassana mediation into practise.

I was standing on the battle field fighting like a trojan warrior for this relationship BUT I hadn’t taken into account Darren. Darren, had not only lost the love of his life two years previously, he was currently losing his mother to the same vile illness that take one in two lives – cancer.

Darren needed me to be his friend and needed to take step back, a mile back and there I was in the “friends zone” It wasn’t about me though, it was about his mother and the time that he has left with her.

I wanted so much to love him from afar, to love him unconditionally and just put my feelings aside but I loved him with such a passion that the flame wouldn’t dim.

The light inside of me was dimming daily whilst reading into his messages and looking for a sign that I still meant something to him. The push and pull feeling that I felt towards him and also I felt he was doing with me was just too much in the end to bare.

Leaving him a voice clip to tell him that I love him but I was walking away and cutting him out of my life to protect myself was and still is one of the hardest things that I’ve ever had to do. Knowing that I cannot support the man that I love kills me, he was never going to let me as a girlfriend support him, only ever as a friend from afar.

To walk away from somebody you love is so fucking hard but the comfort that I take is the knowledge that it’s the best thing that I can do for him. Right now he needs to be strong for himself and his mother and dealing with another person is just one pressure too much.

Is it the right thing to do – abso-fucking-lutely because when you love someone you love them enough to set them free and let them be.