“It’s not about moving on, but about trying to erase you from my soul.” ~ Kate Rose
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I suppose forgetting would be the easy way out.

As if there was a button to press that would instantly erase my memory—and body—and all the signs of our times together would be gone.

I’d be cleansed of the heartbreak and the challenges, the ins and outs of navigating a love affair that I was never really prepared for.

It’s not that I don’t still love you, because I do. It’s that I don’t know how to stop loving you.

I understand that time has taken us in different directions, that maybe I got it all wrong when I thought I knew your soul, but no matter how I’ve tried, I just don’t know how to forget you.

When our relationship first began its downward spiral, you called me on disappearing and distancing myself. Even that simple act tugged upon the translucent threads of my heart, because no one else had cared to notice when I did that before.

No one has ever called me back in or said they didn’t want to lose me or my children. You simultaneously made me love you more deeply and broke my heart—something I wasn’t even sure was possible until I actually experienced it.

I had every intention of disappearing from your life.

I wanted to punish you, to show you just how deep my presence in your life ran by taking myself out of it. It would have been a game, of course, but I didn’t care; I felt dismissed and like you were setting me out on the curb with whatever inconveniences you didn’t want to deal with at the moment.

It didn’t matter to me then that you were doing the best you could. I didn’t care that this was a reflection of you and your journey and not necessarily me and ours. But, for that night my heart was simply hurt, and I didn’t want to hear anything that you were telling me.

There is always a choice when we end an important relationship: Do we let ourselves operate from our pain-body and lash out irrationally, or can we transmute our experience and simply view it from a neutral standpoint—neither positive or negative, yet necessary.

I knew what I should do, but I didn’t care.

At one point, you had told me that people don’t ever really know what they have until it’s gone, and so I had thought maybe that’s what you were asking from me. Maybe you had to go without me—without my unconditional love, help, and the unique way that I see the world—in order to truly and actually see me. So, I had planned to do it; I was going to just disappear and erase any sign that I had ever been in your life.

But, that didn’t feel right for me.

I wasn’t that woman. I didn’t just leave people, and no matter how hurt my heart was, I couldn’t disappear from the life of someone my roots had grown together with—I couldn’t forget you, because that would mean forgetting about a part of myself.

Somehow, without really ever intending it, you had become a part of me.

I had said as much to you at one point, something about, “Don’t you know that I am inside of you by now?” But in truth, I didn’t really think much about how impossible it would be to remove you from my life. Perhaps some take a scalpel and expertly cut an old love from their life when they break apart, and maybe they would even say that I still should, but that doesn’t mean I am going to.

Perhaps when we are young, or at least still operating from the position of being triggered when someone hurts us, we can rationalize cutting them out and moving on. But as we grow, we change, and I think somewhere within it all we realize that just because a relationship ends doesn’t mean that the love, respect, or connection will ever fade.

In fact, the relationship isn’t over at all; it’s just gone through a metamorphosis to something new.

I can’t lie and say that I still don’t want you here with me, or that all my faith for us has died, because it hasn’t—but I also believing in accepting people for where they are at without trying to drag them out of their journey because of our egos.

This means that I accept things as they are even if I still believe that perhaps one day it will all change.

See, the truth that I hate to admit is that I needed you to do this. I needed you to end things in the way that you did because I still, even at this point in our journey, needed to learn more and grow.

When we make the choice to love someone for who they truly are, and not just because they make it easy too, is the real mark of unconditional love.

I never really intended to be here on this journey learning what I am clearly meant to, and so sometimes I stumble, sometimes I forget what matters, and sometimes I do wish I could forget about you. But my heart doesn’t want me to and neither does my body or spirit. I actually don’t want to erase even a part of our history because each aspect has made me the woman I am today—and also is all part of our incredible foundation.

No one ever said love was easy and no one ever told me that it would be a straight path from here to forever, but perhaps it’s the journey that we need in order to learn not only how we love—but who we truly love as well.

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Author: Kate Rose
Image: Flickr/Mateus Lunardi Dutra
Editor: Travis May