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Mistake
It wasn't until he was gone that I realised my mistake. I thought that what I felt for him wasn't love because it was so different from what I'd felt in the past. I never felt like I was flying when he with me, soaring above the earth until the seemingly inevitable fall. Instead, when I was with Brian I felt like I was home. I felt safe, protected and understood. I felt like I didn't need to be anything more than exactly who I am, flawed and imperfect but accepted anyway. When I was with him, I felt just like I did all the years that we were friends.
There was passion between us, but even that was different. I thought it was lacking because it was like a banked fire – a constant source of warmth that could be stirred into flame at any time but never a raging inferno that threatened to consume us both.
I never realised how much he did for me or how much I depended on him. I never knew how big a part of my life he was. Even when I was involved with someone else, he was alway6s there. He was the one that I turned to when I needed to talk and he always took the time to listen and support me. If I couldn't or wouldn't turn to my family, his shoulder was always there for me to lean on – or cry on. In a thousand little ways he'd been the man in my life for years and his support was so steadfast and unassuming that I barely noticed it until it was gone.
When he left – when I drove him away – it felt like he took the best part of me with him, leaving me hollow inside. The pain was different too, that was what finally made me recognise the truth. It was so much deeper that anything I'd felt in the past, an all-encompassing ache that coloured every aspect of my life. At work I kept expecting to see him, only to feel the loss anew when I remembered that he would never be there again. I grieved for him as though he had died, but the pain wasn't just for me. I hurt because of the pain I'd caused him.
Only then did I realise the truth, that I had had it backward. That everything that came before had been the imitation, the brilliant flash of a firework in the night, that died almost as soon as it was born. What I'd had with him had been real and true and lasting. The candle flame of real love that would have burned bright and steady for the rest of our lives...if only I hadn't blown it out.
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