Missing Perspective

Write it.

Read it.

Revise it.

Re-Read it.

Edit it.

Then Re-Read it 3 Times before finalizing it.

Not just artistic quality but for clarity. For filling in the missing blanks that are not supposed to be missing. To avoid misunderstandings.

Last December, if you recall, I had written a post: “To My First & Best Loves: I Will Love You Always.”

Wow, that thing created a mess. And I never really understood why.

Until earlier today.

I re-read the entire post beginning to end and realized I left out a vital piece of information, just one sentence that I thought I typed but I guess I didn’t.

The main points of the post were the following:

• I realized I had spent almost five years trying to replace or rebound from my First Love and later my Best Love.
• I realized that while I originally thought of two kinds of closure post-heartbreak, there was a third option which was: Acknowledge “it’s okay to admit that there’s that emptiness inside that won’t go away. I’m capable of making room for others. Not to take their place, but to make a place of their own.”
• And finally: “And who knows, maybe no one’s gonna wanna date a girl that is so very clearly still enamored by two of the most beautiful men in her life and will never stop. But you know what, I’ll deal with it then. This is closure. This is what makes me happy. Realizing I don’t need to nor want to replace them even if I’m not with them.”

And obviously, this would cause a lot of problems. Because combined with the title, this makes it sound like I was saying I was never going to ever get over them and that I would love multiple people like that at the same time always.

NOT what I meant.

At all.

Here’s my missing sentence: “Not that I’ll love them in a now-kind of way, but more so be in love with the memory.”

Here’s my missing sentence in context: “I love my First Love and Best Love, romantically, and I will always love them. Not that I’ll love them in a now-kind of way, but more so be in love with the memory. In all truth, it really is as simple as they said no.”

Basically, the whole post was me coming to terms with the fact that there wasn’t some super profound reason that those relationships didn’t work out romantically and remained as friendships, but simply that they didn’t feel it like I did and that’s okay. And the fact that I would always love them romantically stems from the idea that memory is a powerful thing and so I would always be a little in love with that memory, that I can’t undo the past. Only that I can look to the future.

In fact, instead of that one sentence I had planned, maybe I should’ve just wrote that.

But I didn’t write either.

I missed it.

Maybe it’s that sometimes you read what you think you wrote. Maybe I skimmed it too fast that I overlooked the fact that I missed it. Maybe I forgot to re-read it altogether. Not sure. Don’t remember exactly. But I’ll admit, I screwed up.

And the last 349 days suddenly make so much more sense…

So you’ll ask me: Why not just update the other post?

And I’ll tell you this: Because this was a learning moment and I want it to be a teaching moment.