In The Blink Of An Eye

I Do or I Don't

Before I could give him an answer, I thought about everything. Not that I needed to, it just all came rushing back to me. From the very first day we met to this moment right now, it all came flooding through my head as I stood there in that room with everyone around me waiting for an answer. 

The way I felt when I was around him was something I felt long before I ever saw him in person and long before I even knew who he was. 

From the first day, when he popped up on my phone screen behind that mask, the worry felt every single time I couldn't talk to him for hours and days wondering if I would ever hear from him again. The excitement I felt for our first date and then the fear of losing him forever. The heartbreak that I felt when he never showed up and the way my heart felt the very first time I actually saw him. Our first kiss, our first conversation, our first shared laugh and the first time we both laid in bed and cried all the way to this moment of him standing in front of me asking me to marry him. Everything, all that we had been through led us to this moment, the moment that I thought would never come. The moment that I realized how wrong I had been. 

You see, after I met Evan I knew what true love was. I knew what it felt like to love someone unconditionally and to be loved back. After Evan died, I swore on everything I have that I would never fall in love again. I couldn't even imagine the idea of being with someone else besides Evan. He was my one dream come true. I was broken to so many pieces that I thought for sure nobody would ever be able to find and put all those pieces back together and I was right, nobody has. But not because he couldn't, but because I didn't let him. 

I held onto the idea that nobody would ever love me the way Evan did, that I forgot to see that someone else did love me. Not the way Evan did, but the way Jake did. He would never love me like Evan and he couldn't even if he tried but he didn't have to. The way Jake loved me was different but it wasn't any less of a love just because it wasn't the same. I compared my happiness with Evan and I was sure I would never be that happy again, and I'm not. The happiness I had with Evan was the one I created and shared with him and nobody would be able to make me that happy again. But, he didn't have to. The happiness I felt with Jake was different, but it wasn't any less of a happiness because it wasn't the same as the one I had with Evan. 

I promised myself so many times that I would never love anybody the way I loved Evan and I didn't and I never would. But, I was also wrong. I didn't love Jake the way I loved Evan but the love I felt for Jake wasn't any less of a love just because it wasn't the same. 

Why should anything I felt for Evan and shared with Evan be the same as what I feel or share now with Jake? 

Does it have to be? 

Jake and Evan weren't the same. So why should anything I have with them be the same? It wasn't and it was never going to be. But, that doesn't mean it's not possible or that it's not right or that it doesn't feel just as amazing. 

I was hurt when I met Evan, I was heartbroken. I was sad, shattered, empty and I felt all alone. He had to find a way to fix a heart that was shattered into pieces by a man that left me. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't impossible either. All I needed was for someone to love me, to be there, to care for me, to show me that he wasn't going to leave too. Evan was able to do all that and more. 

When Jake came, I wasn't just heartbroken I was completely broken. Every part of me. My heart, my brain, my thoughts and most importantly...my soul. It was all broken in ways that aren't even describable. He not only had to find a way to fix my heart, but Jake has to find ways every single day to fix me. Every part of me that has been broken, and honestly, I don't know if that will ever be possible. 

Evan had to fix a broken heart from one person that had left me and that I lost, Jake. But Jake had to fix me as a person when I felt like I was losing everything and everyone I ever loved and cared about. First Evan, then my parents, then my friends, my relationship with my siblings, my relationship with my daughter and most tragically, I had lost myself.