A few weeks ago, I fell absolutely head-over-heels in love with a boy. We're talking madly in love here, not a halfway thing or anything less. We're talking late nights at his place, conversations about everything, and falling asleep side by side with racing hearts and heavy, tired eyes.
In the beginning, when everything was new and exciting, I warned him that there would be days when I'd have too much attitude for him to handle. I told him about what a mess I was, how prone I was to anxiety attacks, and how grumpy I can sometimes get. I wanted him to know that if he truly was going to love me as he said he would, there would be rough patches he'd have to stick with me through.
I needed him to know that if he was going to buy a plane ticket into my life and to call my heart a home, he would have to take the turbulence that came along.
He said he would.
A week or so later, in his dorm somewhere around 3 a.m., I asked him out of nowhere if he'd ever flown before. If he'd ever stepped foot on a plane. When he said no, I continued to ask him if he ever would.
"Probably not," he said. "It's kind of scary, honestly. Especially if something goes wrong."
I didn't think about anything other than the literal meaning of that conversation until a couple days after he had broken up with me.
He had told me he loved me, and had promised to love me no matter what. He had bought that ticket.
Everything was good, until things got hard. When it wasn't all smiles and heart emojis and long, intoxicating conversations, he became very fearful of that emotional turbulence.
When I called him out on it, I realized just how accurate the analogy was.
"You told me you loved me," I said, to which he responded with the painful words, "I thought I did" followed by, "I wanted to."
Wanted to? Would you buy a plane ticket if you wanted to go on a trip, even if you knew you couldn't?
It made no sense to me.
"You shouldn't have told me if you didn't know," I told him. "Because you definitely didn't love me if you only acted like it when things were good."
I should have known, when he told me he wouldn't even ever buy a plane ticket for fear that it wouldn't be a guaranteed smooth ride, that he didn't really mean it when he said he loved me.
He's wanderlusting out there now. Somewhere. Buying tickets to see the things he wants to see and finding his away into the hearts and minds of those who are willing to be more than just a human host- but a home to him and his fragile being.
I could have been his home. His world. His everything. I let him go, though, and I let him go easily.
I let him go because I was proud of him for allowing me to be one of the first distance flights on the way to wherever it is he ends up someday.
I let him go because he needed to breathe, and for us to keep flying would've killed him.
He has so much to explore out in this world, and so many people who I know will stay by his side when things get rough.
He wasn't afraid to fall. Not in love, at least, and I have to admire that. But he was afraid to fly. He was too afraid of turbulence to get too far off the ground. He jumped out of that plane.
And it sucks, because he left me alone up in the clouds.
But hey, there's a lot of room for dreaming up here.
Moral: Don't promise someone you will love them if you don't know, or if you're fearful of only loving them conditionally.
Don't buy a plane ticket into their life if you're afraid of the turbulence that comes along with it.
