It did not start when you told me that you loved me.

How could it? We were so young, so naive. We were in the beta versions of our lives. It did not count. You refused to stop expressing your love. You were relentless. Maybe it was an obsession for you. Infatuation, is what they call it. Or maybe it really was love.

It made me feel so very special. I felt that the world will never stop loving me. It was an endless supply of serotonin. I was high on your love for me but I did not really think about you and me. I did not really think, period. I was just riding the high like a stupid hormonal teenager, who thinks this is how her whole life will look like. Stupid.

Some time passed, we moved on and you moved away. You put the entire world between us. And it did not even start then. It’s funny, I do not know how or why we managed to stay in touch. But I will forever be grateful that we did. Because I was there to see you become a whole human. With thoughts and opinions and so much chaos. With your silly long hair and your cool ripped jeans. With your worn out sneakers. Sneakers that travelled the world and stumbled on so much life.

I can confess it now, I was so jealous. It felt like you were a free bird going on adventures everyday and coming back home once a year, to me the squirrel who lives in the tree.

But that is when it started. I don’t know what made me feel it first. It could be your stupid little grin after we finished arguing some existential concept to death. It could be the way you listened to my theories, really truly listened. It could be us being our authentic idiot selves in the car every time you dropped me home. It could be us destroying the lyrics to multiple songs together.

It could be all of it. There was so little of it but still enough for me to think about nothing and nobody else. I truly cherished the two-three days we got to spend together every year. So when I finally had to get my shit together and either move on or hold onto you, I told you that I love you. And you did not. You chose to fly a little further away and it shattered me.

So I focussed on your flaws. And there are so many of them. I told myself I deserve better and I do. I kept thinking about how I could have said it better. Maybe I should have said it in person. Maybe I should have said nothing at all.

It’s ironic how we have potentially talked about everything in this universe except us.

I do not remember exactly how we moved on from there. But it’s you and me, so obviously, we did. Because for me, it is still much more important to spend the two-three days in a year with you than nothing at all.

All my friends said that it is hopeless, hanging onto you. But that is the strange thing about love. There is no other way and you can’t just make it stop. It’s not a temporary obsession, it is permanent damage. I have loved you when I hated you and what is that about? I did not and do not care that you don’t love me back. For me, it is not about having an epic romance. It is just about having more conversations with you.

Because when I am with you, I love myself. I love how my brain works and how I feel about life. I do not understand how one person can get that out of somebody. But you did that for me and I loved you for it.

So after all of that, it really breaks my heart when you still keep flying further away. I hate you when you don’t remember important occasions and only call me when you need something. I hate you for being so nonchalant about it all. I hate you for not appreciating my friendship. I hate you for not texting back and many other silly little things. But most of all, I hate that I have not met anybody else like you.

And what I’d love even more than loving you through all that, is loving you despite of all that. If only you made it easier to do so.

However, the silver lining in all of this is that by loving you, I came to learn how to love myself. You did that for me. And now I am learning to love myself more than I ever loved you. Not only through it all but despite of it all.

After all, squirrels can run (and kind of fly?).