heartache – The Tempest

I am a lie.

Yes, a lie, not a liar.

I betrayed my former partner with another. I immediately told my boyfriend, but I kept feeling like I was a lie.

Indeed, I grew up with some specific values of honesty, loyalty, and respect.

I valued them more than anything else, especially in relationships. I strongly believed and proclaimed that betraying someone means not loving them enough and disrespecting them.

Undoubtedly, I do believe it, but I made a terrible mistake. I went against all of my values.

I was in love with my former partner. It was almost a year and a half that we were together, and I betrayed him with someone else (let’s call him Andrew).

It was not a ‘casual’ betrayal; I know I actively chose to do it. I was on holiday and one night I received a message from Andrew asking me if I would like to have a walk with him.

I was stuck in between betraying my boyfriend or betraying my feelings.

I went against all of my values.

Knowing what would’ve happened, I chose the first option, and I have regretted it since then. Not only for the pain I caused to my boyfriend, but mainly for how I felt after that.

I felt terrible. I felt like I had destroyed my entire world.

It would be easier to say that my partner had treated me badly before my betrayal, but he was a nice person, always kind, caring and lovely to me.

It would be easier to say that it was a period in which I felt oppressed and I was looking for freedom, but still, this cannot justify my actions.

So, I guess, I am the only one to blame.

I am a lie.

A lie, not a liar.

Immediately after, I told him everything and he forgave me.

We broke up. And I lost myself.

I did not know who I was anymore.

How can you be in peace with yourself when you betray someone who not only loves you, but also forgives you?

It felt like I was no longer yourself. Like my entire world became a lie.

I hated myself for having betrayed all of my beliefs. How could I proclaim anymore what love was once if I I had betrayed its very meaning?

We broke up. And I lost myself.

I felt like I stained my soul forever.

After a month, my boyfriend and I started to date again. He was over my betrayal. I was not. I realized I needed my own forgiveness to move on.

It took me another four months (and many tears) to admit I did not love my boyfriend anymore. I broke up with him, and I focused on reconnecting with myself.

I had to accept that I made a mistake.

I needed to recognize my feelings before the betrayal. I learned the importance of forgiving my actions and thoughts.

We are humans. Sometimes we are egotistical; sometimes we are impulsive. And mainly, we cannot always live up to our personal standards.

Sometimes, we need to rest and reset.

I needed almost a year to forgive myself. To acknowledge my weaknesses and to create a better version of myself.

It has been a painful path, and I am sure it has not ended yet.

But I knew I was going in the right direction, when I confessed this experience to someone I really cared about yet whose opinion I dreaded the most.

And he told me that I am not my mistake but more than it. And that our relationship could be the proof that I definitely learned from my mistake.

This betrayal has completely changed my life. It taught me that not being loved by someone we love is heartbreaking.

What’s worse, though, is not loving someone who is still in love with us — and cheating on them instead.

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Usually when I think of unrequited love, I think of something great. Some sort of grand story full of catharsis. Unrequited is generally special.

A type of love that demands to be talked about for an eternity. Something electric, with compulsive wavelengths. Something like the movies that comes with its own playlist attached to it.

Something with late and long nights spent together in a damp minivan twinkling and spitting out dreams on a whim. Something with vicious fights fueled by our own desire. Something that makes my soul open up just as swiftly as it gets torn apart. And, somehow I wind up bursting at the seams yet feel completely unsatisfied. I always want more.

Why do we long for the type of love that hurts so much it imprints our hearts? It is difficult to locate the line that separates struggle and triumph, as nearly every love story in popular media blurs the two. But unrequited love is so unbelievably magnificent and sad at the same time that it becomes all encompassing.

Unrequited love is an entire body, overwhelming, feeling. I have broken hearts before and I have had my heart broken, so I can tell you that the feeling never fades, one way or the other. It feels as if you are running fast, and for a long time, yet making no distance at all.

One time I waited two months for a guy to message me back before I realized that he just wasn’t going to. Ever. Again. And that entire time I couldn’t help but wonder why I cared so much. What we had wasn’t at all special, but I still was left longing for a distraction from the heartbreak. I was showered by his passivity instead of his kisses and I wanted him to know how much his absence hurt me, but he was so equally careless and carefree that none of it mattered.

Not even for a second.

I felt unrequited love again while in a long-distance relationship. This kind of unrequited was different. It wasn’t one-sided. Instead, we felt tremendously for each other. It’s just that our bodies weren’t able to be physically together for some time. We were only long distance for the few months that I would be studying abroad, but it felt like an eternity. I remember being there and using all of my senses to try to gauge what his touch felt like.

Somedays I would wake up and watch the sun from my window, silently knowing that that same sun wouldn’t bounce to him for another six hours, and I would recall how that same sun looked dancing across his back at dawn. I’d lay in bed at night and want to tell him about my day, but I knew that I couldn’t. I was constantly reminded that he no longer took up the space in between my arms when we slept. But I was, and still am, fascinated by the immediate consumption of these moments. I am so grateful to have given him my heart. He still has it.

The extent of passion is practically boundless. We should feel like we can fly on a whim, or scream and dance, when we are in love. Unrequited love just forces you to confront that intensity, those struggles and triumphs, head on. Some of it is beautiful; some not so much. I like to remind myself that love doesn’t need a reason, love just is.

Unrequited love is messy, but worth it. It is a collection of fleeting moments. It teaches us that all love should be leaking, dripping, through every difficulty yet also a thread that is continuously weaving through and connecting our bodies and our souls. The whole point of longing is to continue, because there will always be potential to love someone rather than to have loved someone. They can’t be the one that got away if they weren’t the one in the first place.