The Realization That ‘The One’ Is Just Somebody I Used To Know

by Sejal Parikh · September 14, 2015

Even today when I hear a deep voice, breathe in the subtle musk of the same aftershave or indulge in animated banter about Keats, my heart betrays its beat. With a wistful sigh, I remember him.

He was the One.

Or at least, who I thought was the One!

I loved him. And he loved me too.

Each night, we’d sleep in the shelter of each other’s arms and the moon would hang low to the ground to light up our smiles in the dark, the stars scattered all about us in a comfort blanket. We’d talk of love and life and then, fall asleep in a happy present with dreams of an even happier future.

And then, it happened.

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Each night, we’d sleep in the clutter of each other’s arms and the moon would hang low to the ground to light up the smiles we knew we were faking, the stars scattered about us in a prickly bedspread. We’d talk in lies about love and life and then, fall asleep in an ocean of tears, unsure whether we could swim to the shore and save ourselves.

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He was the same person I fell asleep with each night, and yet, not the same person I remembered waking up next to.

Something had changed. Something about time. About our love. About us.

We hadn’t planned it, we didn’t want it… and yet, it had happened.

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The love that once breathed for the one I knew I’d be together forever with- was now choked for the very same partner turned stranger to my heart. The person I once loved was no longer the person I loved anymore.

Not because my love ran dry but because the person, for whom the love was, no longer was the same. He wasn’t the same, and hence, my love for him wasn’t the same, and so, I didn’t feel quite the same.

It wasn’t anybody’s fault – but hurt. Like the throbbing pain of a cut made by the knife of ‘whys’ and ‘what ifs.’

After all, he was the one, wasn’t he?

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I could touch him still – but didn’t feel him. I could see him still – but he felt like a mirage, close by in one moment, and far away in another. The relationship we built together was still distinctly mine and yet, so foggy, I couldn’t hold on. I felt my heart breaking, and yet, he didn’t quite break it. I wanted to blame him, but it wasn’t his fault. I was with him, and yet, I had lost him!

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Realizing that the one I thought I was meant to be with wasn’t quite the one I could bear to be with, was frightening!

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But even more frightening was the next step – deciding whether to continue falling asleep with him each night and wake up next to him every morning, or simply tie my days and nights to his absence. And it wasn’t easy.

A part of me knew it was a gaping rift – the bridges between us were fast collapsing – but could we build new ones? After all what was wasn’t gone, it was simply different. Could I walk through the burnt bridge and reach out into the distance for what used to be in my reach always?

NO. I couldn’t.

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With him, I was becoming what I had wanted to be all along – and I couldn’t push myself back to become another only because his new self was pulling me to be so. He had changed and his newness had pushed me and my love out.

If the change that changed him weren’t a bigger force than myself and my love, we’d have been the same.

But since we weren’t, it simply meant that he’d transformed into the one he was meant to be. The one I wasn’t meant to be with.

And I had to accept that. Accept the change. Accept that change.