When I Fell In Love

but this time, it was different.

"Some of the most beautiful things we have in life comes from our mistakes."
— Surgeo Bell

You are the most beautiful mistake I've ever had the pleasure of revisiting.

If there's one thing I can do, it's own up to the fact that I am the most imperfect person you could ever meet.

I proved that over and over again as my hurricane like will blazed trails through the hearts of those around me, taking and never giving, howling when others dared to try and slow me down by casting trees in my path.

That's what I had done to you the first time. I had howled and screamed and spun through your life, hurt and aggravated, at least a category four in terms of damage. I wrecked your coasts totally, drowning your cities, leaving every part of you broken.

Or so I thought.

Because I spun away from your coast and out into the cool open ocean and failed to realize that you had never been those cities. You had been the waves, bending to please me, adjusting to my war path in silent support.

Those who lack the ability to love are often seen as cold, but I was far too hot. Hot and angry and filled with fire at everything I deemed as wrongdoing that had been directed at me in life. Your icy seas were exactly the fix I didn't know I needed.

When I fell for you the second time, I fell for the real you. You had a temper just as quick as mine, but had a disposition that felt calm and in control - something the military had drilled into you. The player role you had acted out before was just as flimsy as the put together persona I tried to give off. All it took was a brush of my winds to blow them both away. I saw the hardness from before and understood that it was just armor, similar to the armor I wore. We unclipped the metal from our bodies and stood stark in front of each other.

Despite all my loving I had never felt the things I felt with you before. Maybe our love came from a different place. No longer was the bond formed out of a shared hurt or tragic backstory. I wasn't broken and you weren't trying to fix me and you weren't broken and I wasn't trying to fix you. No, though we listened and acknowledged that there was a past that existed for the both of us, we weren't dependent on the shattered foundations of scars - our love came from the understanding we shared.

That's the other thing - we shared.

We did not give and take until one was full to the brim and the other was gasping for life. Our breaths were not cycled from one into the other. No. We were whole systems on our own. Me - the tropical storm with you as the choppy sea beneath me. We were not one, but we coexisted intimately on the same plane.

Despite all of this, our love story does not have a happily ever after. At least, not with one another. You left me just as I had once left you, but this departure did not match the first. Where I once was a hurricane ripping through the coastline, gaining momentum and speed, I was now a tropical storm in your chilly waters with nothing left to run me ragged and violently turn me. As tropical storms must, I dissipated.

My dark clouds broke apart. My winds calmed. The pellets of water I had been that shot through those around me returned to the sea.

You left and I hurt, but I was not Hurt. You left me stronger than you came back to me, and I hoped I did the same for you.

I became an ocean of my own. Cool, but not harsh. Strong, but not unforgiving. Able to wreck, but willing to calm.

You taught me a new way to love.