Call It What You Want

by Alissa DeRogatis

Life got so much better when I stopped looking for love in every guy I met.

To no one’s surprise, we lost. “Told you I was terrible,” I said, hanging my head. “We’ll get ’em next time,” Ethan assured me.

You’d never suspect that was the worst day of my life, at least so far. I spent it hoping that my mom would show up to the ceremony. She never did. I had to hide how much it hurt as I went to dinner with the Clarks and then got the most wasted that I’d ever been at our friend’s party.

If I knew loving him would have hurt this badly, I would’ve never laid my eyes on him.

God, I missed kissing him. His lips were home, and I didn’t realize just how homesick I’d been until I got to kiss them again. I knew we had to pull apart, but I wasn’t ready yet. How do you let go of someone who feels like home?

That night I realized that losing someone doesn’t necessarily mean losing. Every time someone walks out of your life, someone new eventually walks into it. Losing someone means you’ll eventually gain someone even better.

I didn’t want this to be a lesson; I wanted it to be love. But if we weren’t meant to last, then the best I can hope for is that you use our time together as a learning experience, a source of wisdom, a reason to change.

you used to. In the way that you love an old friend you no longer talk to, in the way you love a restaurant that you can’t return to because it closed—it’s an empty kind of love.

pair of jeans, which probably need a wash, but I decide they can make it one more night without one.

My therapist says you never want an ex who tries to happy birthday their way back into your life.

Here’s the thing about unconditional love though—it isn’t one-sided. It isn’t standing in someone’s doorway begging to be let in. It isn’t taking your heart out of your chest, bloody and beating, and handing it to someone to do whatever they want with it. Unconditional love is someone breaking down the cage of your ribs to get your heart and you trusting they’ll protect it just the same.

I knew that I wanted readers to understand that just because a relationship doesn’t have a label or a title doesn’t mean what they experienced wasn’t love.