Let love lead leave

“I love you. I would like to be near you, I would like to have your arms around me. I would like to have your voice in my ear but that is not possible now. I love you so go. Love liberates, it doesn’t hold. That’s ego. Love liberates.”

~Maya Angelou

When the bible said, “Love is not selfish.” my mind rushed to associate those words with how we share things of the materialistic kind.

Selfish in terms of holding things to yourself, keeping all your cards sewn to our chest. 21 years, 5 months and 5 days later, I would change that verse to “Love unburdens.”

In the words of Maya Angelou. “I love you so go. Love liberates, it doesn’t hold. That’s ego. Love liberates.” But human nature does not willingly allow us to let go, to accept that love is not possession nor does it hold a person hostage.

Love, the feeling, started out in rose colored glasses and a fiery passion that put UY Scuti to shame: the constant phone calls that lasted hours, the longing when they were away and yearning that accompanies the  kaleidoscope of butterflies in your stomach each time their name rings in the air,

They say time heals, mends and remedies, but you have since learned that time tells and turns things sour.

The rose-colored glasses fractured, and faded, letting in the harsh glare of reality. The butterflies that inhabited your stomach ceased to beat their wings, each day adding a layer of unwarranted complexities into your once vibrant union.

All of it as though the petals of roses withered when tested, leaving behind thorns that pricked and pierced; words that stung and stayed.

You tried to work it out, to put differences aside but nothing you do seems to work. Talks and more talks, with agendas: ‘clean slate’ and ‘let us try harder’, but what really does happen when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?

Beloved, love is a mercurial muse.

Blinded by love that wants to possess , a love that drips of selfishness, you try to hold on to a crippling maybe it will work this time, but you realize that the true show of your love is to loosen your grip, to set each other free. Your love was malnourished and you suffocated under the weight of the hurt, any more time and it would breed resentment.

Your heart broke: loud and irreparable.  Feelings of failure and inadequancy for letting the fire die out came charging in, rattling your world and shading your days. Deep down, you understand it is for the best, and your happiness does not lie with each other.

The hearts you traded  had to be returned, time was the overseer of that too.

“Love liberates, it does not hold,” you told yourself every time you felt your heart break. Days turned into weeks and weeks into years. The remnants of that love faded into the corner of your mind, a bittersweet ache that reminded you that once there was love.

Life bring new experiences, new loves, they all grow from the beautiful ashes of a former flame, a forgotten history.

Maybe, beloved, in some distant future, you will meet the love you liberated, your eyes will meet and recognition will dawn.

“I would have set the world on fire for you,” you will think with a smile. Your familiar stranger. You have grown, evolved, and rebranded a million times in the wake of your separation. You wish them well, you wish them happiness: your love does not confine.

You are grateful for the time, the memories, the moments, and the insane amounts of courage it took to say goodbye. You realize it was an act of grace and an offering of laissez-aller.

You remain strangers, untethered to each other, and each contented in your separate lives. Some loves, no matter how fierce, are not meant to last forever in the conventional way.

You let go, not out of weakness, but strength.

You went your way, not out of indifference, but out of love.

You send them your good wishes on whisphered winds, hoping that life’s wonders find their way to their doorstep and life’s serendipities grace their path.

Time does heal, you realize, and out of love, one should know when they have fallen out of love.

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