Will you forgive, if and when I tell you?

You say that this experience feels new. You’re on this ride with me to a new land that neither one of us quite know the name of. And I feel it in the way you bite your lips, the coy smile that plays on your face when you bashfully say that you like me, I can feel that sincerity. I truly believe that you believe in all that you say. That each love is like a different book. No less great, but completely different in what is felt, experienced, and taken.

Yet, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m the second act, the sequel to an amazing first novel. And you are that amazing first novel for me. The epic story of love, lost, and coming-of-age that a romantic never quite forgets. And though I don’t prescribe to the benefits of jealousy, I can feel it coming on. I can’t allow myself to feel it.

I can’t allow myself to be so invested that every time you mention his name it becomes a sharp blade through the muscles of my fragile heart, that every time you suggest an activity the first thought that pops into my head is would you be doing the same things with him, and that each and every time I see you, I think, will I ever be as important to you as he was?

You’ve already sang your song to another heart. It’s unfair. It’s sad. But it’s true. And this devastates me. It makes me so upset, because I know that I could never love you knowing this. Not in the way that you want me to. Not in the way that I want to.

Maybe this is self-preservation. Maybe it’s self-destruction. But I want to save my songs and my tears for someone who still has theirs intact. Who I can believe without a doubt that I will be their great love, their first love, and more than second best.

Will you forgive, if and when I tell you?

– Anonymous