Valentine's Day

This Valentine’s Day I might be alone, but I’ll get through it. I am comforted by the fact that there have been women that I have loved and that have loved me back so fiercely that I can still remember what it was like. I remember looks from across the room, and smiles that were just for me. I can recall passion and romance and sleeping with them pressed so tight up against me that you couldn’t fit a sheet between us. I remember skin on skin and hand in hand, and anticipation and the way they fell into me when I held them in my arms. I remember times they cried and told me that there with me was the only place they felt safe and like they weren’t alone in the world, and I understood because I felt the same way.
I also know how some of them punished and beat themselves up, continuing the work that others had started long before I came along. I remember how exquisitely my heart broke as I watched theirs break inside of them as well. I remember trying to hold onto them, to hold onto something that was already gone, and long nights spent alone again, wondering how I would go on.
On some of those nights, while the world seemed completely shattered, only to discover that it could shatter more, I would wonder where they were and hope they were safe and happy. I am not mad. I am not bitter. I am sad that either I wasn’t enough, or maybe nothing would ever be enough. I am heartbroken for them and I wish there were something I could do, that I could be a light that calls them out of the darkness, but it’s not to be.
Mostly I am grateful, because I know what love is. I have seen it, I have lived it, I have breathed it in and let it encompass me. No matter the pain involved, no matter all the tears and terror and time alone, I am still thankful for what they gave me.
Whatever this world might bring, I know I was loved, and I know that I will be loved again. Even though they might have been damaged, even though it didn’t work out, even if it tore my heart in two, I know that there were moments in my life where someone loved me more than they loved anything else in the world, and maybe that is enough.