I’m trying really hard to accept that fact that our lives have headed in different direction – directions we both knew we were bound for. Our lifestyles are different, you chose one path and I chose another. We both knew we needed to live out our dreams, but we’re living them out separately and sometimes that’s hard to accept.
It’s hard to accept because you wish there was a way to make it work, but sometimes you can’t because love isn’t the only factor out there.
Sometimes I wish we both didn’t want different things. I wish we could just be content with living normal lives, just settling down somewhere together, but that’s not the case. Neither of us were after a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence and 2.5 kids. Neither of us were destined for that.
We both decided to follow our passions, our purpose and live out of truths. And that’s okay.
Sometimes we don’t end up with the person we love because life has different plans for us, even if we can’t see them now.
Maybe we will both meet someone different, someone who loves us in a different way, a way we grow to love. Maybe we will both be happier living out of our dreams instead of staying and settling because that’s exactly what we’d be doing. We’d be settling if we stayed because that’s not what either of us really wanted. If we decided to pick love over passions we’d be miserable, we’d grow resentful.
Or maybe we will follow our dreams but still end up crossing paths again in the future, right now that’s all I have to hang on to. Right now I hope this isn’t the end of our story, but if it is I will have to accept it and be grateful I ever got to love you.
I’m hanging on to hope that we will wind up together someday, but this isn’t a movie or a romance novel – this is real life. And in real life things don’t always work out, you don’t always get your happily ever after, you don’t always end up marrying the one person you truly love because life happens and feelings change.
It’s hard to accept, but there’s a lot more than love in this world. Love is the one thing we’re all after in the long run, but sometimes your hearts can’t make it through all the highs and lows in-between.
It doesn’t mean what we had wasn’t real, it doesn’t mean those memories don’t count, it doesn’t make our love any less significant just because we didn’t end up together. Sometimes you just have to appreciate the time you had, appreciate the love you shared – all the tears, smiles and laughter because at least you know what that feels like to experience.
Sometimes the greatest sacrifice you can make in love is letting each other go because you want more for yourselves and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not selfish – hanging on would be selfish. But allowing each other to chase your dreams – that’s selfless.
Sometimes we don’t end up with the person we love and that’s okay because life has different plans for us and it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.
By Becca Martin for thoughtcatalog