Someday, when enough time has passed, I am afraid I will remember only how this ended. So I need to write down something more important.

I need to remember why I stayed.

I didn’t stay because I was stupid. I didn’t stay because there was nothing better waiting for me. And I didn’t stay for eight and a half years simply because I didn’t know how to leave.

I stayed because I loved you. I stayed because you were my best friend. I stayed because beneath every complicated thing we went through was a person with one of the most beautiful hearts I have ever known.

And I still believe that.

There are things that happened between us that hurt me deeply. There are things I excused because I understood where they came from. Maybe sometimes I understood too much. Maybe sometimes my empathy made me accept things I shouldn’t have accepted.

I can admit that now. But I will not turn that understanding into something ugly just because our relationship ended.

Because I meant it.

When I looked at everything you had been through and thought, if I had lived his life, I don’t know if I would have come out of it half as good as he did, I meant that. I still mean it.

You experienced things that shaped you. Things you don’t always talk about. Things that taught you how to survive long before I ever knew you. And somehow, after all of it, you still have this unbelievably good heart.

That’s what I saw. That’s what I loved. That’s part of why I stayed.

But even saying that feels inadequate because it makes our love sound like it can be explained by the big things.

It can’t.

The big things are easy to write about. It’s the tiny things that are impossible.

Eight and a half years of tiny things.

The looks nobody else would understand. The stupid jokes. The conversations that wouldn’t mean anything to anyone else. The routines we didn’t realize had become routines. Knowing what the other person meant without them finishing the sentence.

The ordinary days. The ridiculous days. The terrible days. The days where absolutely nothing happened, but you were there.

The thousand insignificant things that became significant simply because they were ours.

How do I explain eight and a half years of knowing another human being? How do I explain what it feels like when somebody becomes home?

I can’t.

That’s the part people won’t see when they look at an ending. They’ll see the reasons we separated because those reasons are easy to explain. They won’t see the millions of reasons separating hurts this fucking much.

But I will.

I know what we were. I know what you were to me. And I know what you still are.

You are someone I trust with my life. I know I am safe with you. I know without hesitation that you would put yourself between me and danger. And you know I would do the same for you.

There aren’t many people in this world I can say that about. Maybe there never will be.

You are my best friend. You are my heart.

And I don’t know what our lives are going to look like from here.

Maybe there are parts of this that I have to let go of even though every part of me wants to hold onto them. Maybe loving someone doesn’t always mean you get to keep them in the way you wanted.

Maybe a soulmate isn’t always the person standing beside you at the end. Maybe sometimes a soulmate is simply someone whose existence permanently divides your life into before I knew you and after.

And that’s you.

I don’t need to hate you to leave. I don’t need to make you the villain so that my decision makes sense. I don’t need to pretend the bad outweighed the good.

Maybe that’s what makes this so fucking hard.

Because there was so much good.

You are good.

And I hope someday you see in yourself what I have always seen in you. I hope you understand how worthy you are of being loved.

I hope you heal the things you never deserved to carry in the first place. I hope you become everything I always knew you could be, because you deserve to know that version of yourself.

And someday, if someone else gets the privilege of loving you for the rest of your life, I hope she understands what she has.

God, I hope she cherishes you.

Not because you belonged to me first, but  because I know the man she’s getting. I know the heart she’s being trusted with.

And I hope she protects it.

I hope she sees the tiny things. I hope she notices the things about you that take years to learn. I hope she loves all the little parts of you that no picture or story could ever capture.

I hope she gets to know the version of you that became my best friend.

And I hope I am strong enough, if that day comes, to be happy that someone I love that much is being loved the way he deserves.

I have things to answer for too.

There were times you deserved better from me. Times I could have listened differently, loved differently, reacted differently, or seen something I didn’t understand until later.

I won’t rewrite our history so that I was always right simply because I was ultimately the one who said we couldn’t keep doing this.

We were two imperfect people who loved each other.

And love didn’t magically heal everything that happened before we found one another.

Sometimes our wounds found each other’s wounds. Sometimes we hurt each other. Sometimes we loved each other through it. Sometimes love was enough to get us through.

And eventually there were things love couldn’t fix.

But that does not mean the love wasn’t real.

That’s what I need to remember.

Leaving does not erase staying. Pain does not erase happiness. The ending does not get to rewrite the middle. And the worst things we did to one another do not get to become the entire story of who we were.

There were eight and a half years. Eight and a half years of a human being I loved enough to build a life around.

That deserves more than being reduced to the reasons it ended.

So when I am angry, I will remember. When I am devastated, I will remember. When somebody asks what happened and I give them the short version because the real version would take eight and a half years to explain, I will remember.

I know why I stayed.

There was so much worth staying for.

And Anthony, whatever happens to us from here, wherever our lives take us, whoever eventually stands beside either one of us, there is a kind of love that doesn’t disappear just because its shape has to change.

You are that love for me.

You were my person. You are my best friend. You are my soulmate.

And part of my heart will always know exactly where you are.

Not because I failed to let you go. But because some people become part of who we are.

You are part of who I am.

And I will never be ashamed that I loved you enough for saying goodbye to hurt this much.