To Heartbreak. The Platonic Kind.

You were my best friend – free of the romance.

But not free of the love.

Free of the vicissitudes that come with romantic love and free of the expectation. Free of the rules of relationships and free of the judgment. Free of the need to be defined to be loved.

You were obsessed with ice cream – I hated it. You lived for restaurants – I could barely sit through one. You needed a crowd – I was content with a handful of people who felt like home.

I loved EDM – you thought it was noise. I was obsessed with my husband – you were still seeking your forever love. I was the adventurer – you were the comfort-seeker.

But despite all that, we were the top of each other’s call lists. I never had to worry if you’d answer and you had to know you came before anyone else.

Nights – and days – and texts – and calls – with you were a blur of joy, laughter, jokes, and heart. You were one of the only people who made me feel like drinks with you were worth sleeping through the gym the next morning. I was one of the only people who experienced you a little less guarded.

Planning a coffee morning meant looking forward to it all week, since I knew it would come with spilling our guts and uncovering some new truths about the world.

My truth, though, is I never cared what we did because the point was you. You chased your immaculate vibes and I just chased our connection.

And maybe that was the problem.

I knew I was the emotionally-open-non-traditional-bring-it-on-and-I’ll-face-it personality and you were the emotionally-guarded-very-traditional-I-need-things-to-fit-in-a-box-to-understand-them counter to that.

The day I knew our connection had an expiration date was the day I realized I would choose you above almost all else – and you were still deciding how much you could choose me. The day I knew I could love you without boundaries – and you needed to live by them. The day I knew you were one of my greatest love stories – and I was still a question mark in yours.

I always knew the type of deep, meaningful friendship we had could be life-changing…if you let it. You, though, had no space to fit me.

So, I chose to cut short one of the only connections outside my marriage that was unyieldingly sacred to me. And the truth I’ve learned is there isn’t really closure in something like that. Just the slow understanding that love can outlast contact, even, in fact, without the romance.

One day, I’ll be at peace with the end of our friendship and I won’t need to find meaning in it. It will be enough that for a little while in this heartbreaking world, we understood each other completely.

But please hear me when I say this – the thing to remember is: I loved you.

And more importantly, I loved you without strings. Without expectation. Without a box to fit our connection in.

To this day, I’m not sure if there is space for a love like that in our world. But I am sure it’s the rarest and most precious kind of love.

I loved you because it was nice to love you. Because I felt loved by you. Because our connection was one of the best things I’ve ever experienced.

I didn’t love you because you were my brother or sister and had to. I didn’t love you because you were my parents or kid and it was expected. I didn’t love you because you were my husband or wife and because legal ties bound us.

I loved you solely because I loved to love you.

And I still do. Quietly.