The beginning of everything else

Prologue - Mid Air Musings

As I sit back in my seat and close my eyes, I finally admit defeat and shut the book that I have been trying to read. I've been on this plane for 30 minutes and I'm a ball of nervous energy. I've read the same page 5 times without any of it going in. It's not the book; I couldn't put it down two days ago, but now that I am here, actually doing this, I just can't focus on anything else.

6 years ago, on the top of that hill was just awful. I knew that we weren't in a good place. I loved her more than anything, but we had been arguing so much and Elle was pulling herself in so many different directions to please everybody else. I had been blind to it until I found the Berkeley acceptance letter, and then I recognized that I was one of the people encouraging that. I had suggested that she apply to go to college in Boston. If I am honest with myself, I hadn't thought about if that was the right school for her, I had just figured "who wouldn't want to go to Harvard" and I wanted her to be there with me.

None of it was deliberate, I hadn't done it in the knowledge I was putting "us" before "her", I just hadn't thought about it in much depth beyond how happy we would be if we were back in the same city. It was a sign that I wasn't quite there maturity-wise, I knew that if she was there in Boston with me I would be happier, it would soothe that overactive part of my mind that was still low level convinced that one day she would realize that she could do better. I had spent years cultivating the image that I didn't care, that nothing dented my confidence, but the truth was that I felt like the best version of me when she was around, and part of that was how she could see straight through the facade. 

The thought of losing that had scared me so much that I had been encouraging her to make choices that were based on my needs and not hers. I had thought about us, our relationship, and our future - which at the time had felt like the romantic thing to do. But it had slowly dawned on me, that all of that couldn't be at the expense of Elle being able to find her passions and achieve her goals.

The Marco situation hadn't helped on so many levels. I was livid that he continued to chase her when he knew she was in a relationship – Now, in hindsight, I could see that he is probably a generally good guy. Lee, Tuppen, and most of our friends had liked him, but still, a good guy could pull a bullshit move. It felt like he would constantly be there in the background, waiting to point out how everything I did was a reason that we shouldn't be together.

I was upset at her too, for not seeing it or listening to any of us telling her that those were his intentions. Elle thought that I didn't trust her, that if I trusted her it shouldn't matter what Marco wanted, but that wasn't the case. It hurt that after being accused of cheating last year – something I would never do to anyone, especially her – the guy she kissed was still in our lives, at my party, in my house. 

I could have dealt with it better, but so could she. 

What I recognized as a mulled it over was that no matter how much we loved each other, we were in different places and needed very different things from this relationship right now. I knew that we needed to stop before the damage was irreversible – before the breakup later down the line was so ugly that there was no coming back. I couldn't ask her to wait for me, that would have been monumentally unfair, so I asked her not to forget me, and left a tiny corner of my heart to hope that one day we would find that we had grown into exactly what each other needed.

I was going to work on myself and Elle needed to put herself first. I needed to be the kind of man that deserved her, but I needed to be that all of the time. Inspired by her, yes, but it had to be for me. Elle needed to be in a place where her choice was Elle, not Noah or Lee, not Noah or Marco. Knowing that it was the right thing to do didn't make it easy and there was never going to be a good way to have that conversation. 

Whilst there was a calmness in my mind from knowing it was the right choice, my heart was in pieces. I wished it wasn't the right thing to do. I wished that we had started this relationship sooner to allow us more time to find our confidence in "us" before the distance took its toll. I wished that we hadn't started this yet so I didn't know what it felt like to love her this much, leaving it to a time when we were more sure of who we were and what we wanted to be, when college decisions weren't in the mix. I wished that I didn't know that the right thing to do was to end this and break both of our hearts. I wished she hadn't come to find me, forcing this conversation to happen here, in a place that until now held only good memories.

The first few months seemed to drag on forever, to say I was devastated was an understatement. Slowly I started to get on with my life; Chloe was a rock and my relationship with Lee got stronger as we both shared in the experience of a breakup that nobody actually wanted. After an initial time of moping, cooped up in my dorm room, I began socializing again. After winter break I went on some dates, and over the years had a few short-term relationships that you might refer to as steady dating. I flipped between trying to convince myself that I had moved on and then admitting that I definitely hadn't every time I compared someone to Elle – surprise, they never came close.

I asked Lee about her a lot,  I tried not to but then blurted it out anyway. She was good, happy, loved her college course and then a few years later loved her job. She was doing so well and as much as I wished that I could have been a part of those successes, cheering her on in the background, I clung to the fact that had we stayed together, this wouldn't be her life now.

Then the phone call came yesterday evening. I had been expecting it after Lee had clued me in on his plans to propose to Rachel. They had found their way back to each other after college and ran with it, achieving those one-in-a-million odds of re-discovering their forever with their first love. As happy for them as I was, I was also pretty jealous. What were the chances that lightning could strike twice in the same family? It wasn't until he asked about Stephanie and I admitted that we broke up because "it just didn't feel right" that Lee sighed and asked, "When are you going to admit that you are still in love with her?"

And that is why it is now on Saturday morning, and I am on a plane flying into LAX hoping that she feels the same.