I wanted to write about something that broke me, and her name was the first thing that popped up on my mind. I was once asked if I’m a winter or a summer person and I said that I’m a winter person, even though I wasn’t, just to avoid saying her name. Yes, that’s her name. Somer. It’s spelled that way, but it’s pronounced as “summer.” I was told to get rid of what brought me sadness, but how can I get rid of her when she was my sadness and my happiness as well. When I’m scrolling through posts on my instagram feed, I see these posts that say “if you loved her, you would’ve never let her go” and “if you can’t stay away from each other, then you’re not meant to stay away from each other” and other posts that say “Let go of the toxicity in your life” and “If you were meant to be, you would’ve been.” Whenever anybody asks why I left her, I say “because we were both too toxic for each other,” until I started believing it too. Or maybe I left because I knew she’d leave me, and I wanted to leave before she left me.

She’s the type of person that everybody leaves. I’ve been friends with her for over nine months and I’ve watched five boyfriends dump her and seven friends leave her. Each not staying with her more than two months. Each saying the reason they left her was because she is selfish and demanding. Each saying she’s hard to love and easy to leave, but in my experience, she was easy to love and hard to leave. I never wanted to leave her. I wish I didn’t have to leave her. But I had to. Refusing to leave her was like standing at the edge of a cliff, afraid to fall, only to remember that you have a parachute on your back. Leaving her was like opening the parachute that you forgot you had and feeling free. We fought almost every single day for eight months. Some days we’d even fight twice a day. But something about her made me stay. I’ve heard people say love is a drug, but I never understood it until I loved like love is a drug. Love indeed is a drug and we were both high on love. We both agreed that we were no good for each other multiple times, but we were both stubborn enough to keep feeding the monster. We parted away from each other four times due to fights, and all four times we got back together as friends. We’ve decided to take a break from each other multiple times, but we were both love addicts. Drug addicts. And staying sober was hard.

Sometimes at night when I’m lonely with my thoughts, I think about her. I think about whether she thinks of me when she’s lonely with her thoughts. I think about if she ever thinks I left her because there was so much that was wrong with her. No. It was what was wrong with us. With me. I couldn’t stand having her hurt me any more, and more than that,  I couldn’t stand having to hurt her any more. I had enough respect for myself to know that I deserved better. I loved myself enough to know that in order to mentally heal, I have to let her go. When I left her, I wanted her to be happy, but I also didn’t want her to be happy without me. I wanted her to move on, but I also didn’t want her to move on from me. I didn’t want her to move on, while I was still stuck on the idea of her. I wanted her to miss me every time she saw my picture. I wanted her voice to break every time she said my name. I wanted her heart to ache every time something reminded her of me. Moving on isn’t forgetting someone. Moving on is moving on without feeling that you’re empty. Moving on is to listen to a song and not remember them. Moving on is to tell a memory and not tear up. Moving on is not forgetting, because I’d never move on. My friend asked me if I ever think of her and I said “No. I don’t think of her. Things remind me of her.” She then asked me if I still love her and I said “One of the many reasons I loved her was because she is beautiful. She is no longer in my life, but she is still beautiful, so ask me again if I still love her.” Another friend asked me if I still miss her and I said “No. I don’t. I miss the idea of her.” Or maybe sometimes you’d think you’re missing someone, but really you’re missing a part of yourself. The part of yourself that you left in them.

My friends have told me that I’ll find someone else like her, but I don’t believe in the idea of finding someone like the person you’ve lost. I think every person is a recipe of unique characteristics that make up their personality. I might be able to find someone who has a beautiful laugh, and is caring, and loves movies like I do, but I don’t think I’ll ever find someone who is obsessed with typing in perfect grammar and punctuation like she is, or is emotionally similar to me, or has big, brown puppy eyes like she does, or loves me as much as she does, or smiles with their tongue pressed against their teeth like she does, or knows my shoe size, or keeps a note of facts about me because they have short-term memory, or has an album of 250 pictures of me.

I remember I once told her that I’d never be able to get over her unless she gave me a reason to hate her. And she did. She broke my trust. I thought that was enough to make me hate her, but it wasn’t. I told myself that maybe the reason I couldn’t hate her was because hate doesn’t run in my blood. Maybe I still can’t hate her because I’ve loved her too much to hate her. Or maybe I’ve just accepted the fact that love comes with pain and pain comes with love. I sometimes wonder if five years from now I’ll remember her name, or her voice, or the sound of her laugh, or the way she smiled. I wonder if a year from now she’ll remember how my name is pronounced, or what my favorite color was, or the name of the first movie we’ve watched together. I wonder if she’ll remember me as the person who left. I want her to remember me as the person who didn’t want to leave. As the person who loved her and cared for her.

I’ve had a lot of friends, and I’ve loved a lot of people, and been attached to a lot of people, but I’ve never loved anybody as much as I loved her. I’ve never been attached to anybody as much as I was attached to her. I’ve never trusted anybody as much as I trusted her. Even though she’s not in my life anymore, I believe that she is still my soulmate. I’ll stay believing that she is my soulmate until I find someone who can convince me that he or she is my soulmate.