She'd fallen in love many times...She knew how some would turn out--those were the fun ones...and then there were the others. She'd swear to herself that they were different, and maybe they were, but after each came and went, she'd say that it wasn't real love. It wasn't that she was naive about it, it was just that after each time, she got closer and closer to what love really meant to her.
There was one time, only once, where she was there--She had found love...but it slipped through her fingers. It wasn't because she didn't love enough, and that's what broke her heart the most; it was life and circumstance that pulled them apart.
They met in college and she was starry-eyed from the beginning. A natural dreamer, she never realized the consequences of her actions. She still had a lifetime ahead of her and not much time left where she currently stood. She worked in the city the summer before graduation and that's when she realized that it could all come crashing down. Graduation...and then the real world. She wasn't always going to be able to live in rural New Jersey, or go to school 20 minutes from the city...and once that reality set in, every thing changed.
She tried to pull them closer together but it felt useless. The more she thought about it, the more her heart ached. She longed to be loved, loved by him; but the more she tried, the less he cared.
He was smarter than she was. He saw all of this happening; he prepared himself. He kept his guard up while she whole-heartily loved and so, their disconnect began.
She tried loving half-heartily but no one wants a mediocre love. Can you blame her? She never regretted any of it. She missed him. He missed her, too, but their personalities made it difficult for long distance.
She cried and he cried, too, because neither of them wanted to say it. They loved each other but life said no. She cried for weeks after, for that was her great love gone. She was never sure if he cried because he wouldn't tell her even if he did.
She tried to get over him by thinking about his not-so-favorable qualities: How he was so quick to say no; how sometimes she felt like she never saw him enough; how he was too shy to show her off...
But nothing worked. She went about her day with thoughts of him in her head, just trying to keep a smile on her face.
She had loved, she had a great love, and she had lost.
