text: A wise woman once said, “If I could turn back time if I could find a way, I’d take back all the words that have hurt you, and you’d stay.” I wondered what she meant until the day I told you that I wasn’t sure if you were the love of my life. I don’t remember what brought this on. Memory is hazy and then it has an aching clarity. It is blurred, then it is searingly sharp. I wonder if you remember this, too. I wonder if you remember that one day we were fine, then we weren’t. In a moment love went from being exciting and new to a source of peril. Did you know that the person with the proverbial sword can cut themselves, too? Breaking someone else’s heart can shatter yours, and there is no balm or sympathy for the enemy. Before you hate me, you have to remember, that I was 19 and the only other loves I ever had were taped to my walls. Or it was tragically unrequited. There were the athletes with girlfriends who didn’t look anything like me. The musicians who would never make me their muse. The others at school who looked past me. The boys who couldn't find anything lovely within me, the girls who didn’t realize I could fall in love with them, too. That is where we met, in a young adulthood that left me primed for rejection. I had gotten very good at being alone. It is a skill to let people know you and keep your core so guarded. I developed the skill of being friendly and somehow distant. Everyone thinks they know me well and yet no one really does. You looked like everyone else on the surface. And so we started our romance the way so many do, as rivals. You were the only person who would have a retort for my opinions in class. The only one who could keep up with me and the only one that I could gather any respect for. Then you scribbled something on a torn piece of notebook paper and slid it towards me- your screen name. A screen name- that is now in a time capsule with my low-rise jeans and Xanga page. Those memories are tucked away in my treasure chest of a heart, where I retreat when the world feels loveless and friendless. Here you came, breathing and hairy and mildly annoying but somehow I couldn't get enough of you. I would sometimes joke that you were like penicillin- a mold that I saw the benefit in. You became so much more than that. Everything was heightened in your presence and in some exhilarating way, felt like standing at the edge of the world. In a way, it was; I will never know who I would have become without you. Somehow diner burgers felt gourmet and rides with the windows down and radio blaring was the most romantic thing. We were a relationship of firsts: first late-night phone conversations, first trips out of the state, then the country, first person to see me naked, in body and soul. I can’t forget that these first-time adventures were also met with first fights, first tears, first insults, and first betrayals. Yes, you were the first, but could you be the only one? The prospect of forever is touching and terrifying. Forever of what? With whom? What else could be waiting for me? The future unfurled itself with one more opportunity and three more possibilities in each step. What if the love of my life greets me on the French Riviera? Would we lock eyes and hold hands, reclining on the deck of an opulent yacht? Could I find completion in the arms of a foreigner with an alluring accent and tan arms? Or would I meet this great love on a safari, as we hold our breaths watching a lion stalk his prey? Could we meet in the mountains of Aspen? I don’t ski, but what if they wandered into a warm lodge at the end of the day, sore from sport, looking up to find me savoring a hot chocolate in some fetching fair-isle sweater? Or what if the love I yearned for all along meets me at the twilight of an exhausted life, in a nursing home with diapered bottoms and soft meals? What if great love is not meant for my youth, but for the end of my days, like the comfort of a quilt after a long day spent in discovery? Young love is easy, but loving someone when the shadow of beauty has fled with memory and flexibility, leaving arthritic joints and fading vision? What if the best is always yet to come? Then, I thought, we would only know our truest love when we are breathing our final breaths, crossing into the Beyond. No, I don’t know if you’re the love of my life. But I do know my indecision crumpled your face in the worst way. Though I hate to admit it, you were the sun. And I managed to dim the radiance in your eyes. Words are like weapons, they wound sometimes. Looking back, I do know it was the beginning of the end for us. You started to think that you would never be enough for me. You wondered if I would ever be satisfied with anything. In some heated arguments, you told me that I might never be happy and that you could never make me happy. In a way, you were right. I still don’t know who the love of my life will be, because life never stops revealing itself in interesting ways where the blush of a stranger can hold the bounty of affection I’ve been looking for. A stranger is just a lover I haven’t kissed yet. Don’t you know that life and love are endless until they are not? Hurtful as it was, there was a bit of wisdom in my youth; we can only truly take stock of our lives at their completion; you can’t truly look backward and live at the same time. I have pushed forward, determined to believe that looking back is a wasted exercise. But if I could take back the words that have hurt you, would you stay?