Love Story

I was going through old boxes tonight. The kind of conglomerations of things you forget you even had. And there they were, the love letters. There were stacks of them. Letters filled with things like “I’ve never loved anyone like this” and “you’re the only home I’ve ever wanted.”

And for a moment, a long, echoing moment, I felt the ache of contradiction that so many of us know too well: How could something that felt that real become something so… gone?

Because here’s what happens when you love the way I do: You go all in. You feel it while it’s happening. You build memory, meaning, and identity around it because it’s true in that moment. And then, when it ends, someone inevitably suggests, either directly or by omission, that it was never what you thought it was. Sometimes they say it with words. Sometimes with silence. Sometimes with a courtroom filing. And sometimes, if you’re not careful, you start saying it to yourself.

The gaslighting doesn’t always happen only during the relationship. Sometimes it happens afterwards in the reconstruction phase. The aftermath. The retelling. You look back and wonder: Did I imagine the depth? Did I project the love? Was I too hopeful, too trusting, too earnest? Especially when the person you shared it with seems to remember it completely differently. Or not at all. And if you’re someone who’s gone through not just one, but multiple unravelings or if you’ve woken up not once, but many times, you might start to assume that you were the unreliable narrator all along.

But here’s what I want to say for you and for me. You didn’t make it up. You felt what you felt. You were present for the experience as it was lived. You didn’t imagine the way your body opened in love, the way your breath caught in recognition, the way your nervous system said yes before your mind could make sense of it. It was real. Even if they couldn’t hold it. Even if it didn’t last. Even if they now say it never existed at all.

Some people rewrite history because they can’t hold what they lost. Others deny it ever happened to avoid the shame of mishandling something sacred. And some never accessed the depth you offered to begin with. They were in the room, but not in the field.

You didn’t misread the connection. You simply read the potential and saw what was possible and what was present in potential, even if it never fully took root in form. You were right.

So this is for the people who kept the letters. And for the ones who burned them but still wake up hearing a single line that once meant everything. This is for the ones who loved full-hearted and now feel like fools. You weren’t foolish. You’re a blueprint. You carry the memory of how real love feels and you’ve never stopped believing it exists. You didn’t make it up. You remembered it first. And it will find you again someday if you open to it and then you’ll finally have earned the discernment to know who can actually meet you at your full voltage. You deserve to experience being loved the way you love and I have to believe the universe loves a love story and a happily ever after. My stubborn, gorgeous heart fully believes that.