Why Loving You Wasn’t Enough

The English language does quite a disservice in expressing the many forms of love. We love our romantic partners, our parents and our pets, but we love them all differently. Our first love will never feel the same as our last, and falling in love and being in love are entirely different beasts. 

Argentinian designer, Jazmin Batista, did a collection of drawings to accompany foreign words that fail translation into English. Gorgeous words that encompass feelings I have never been able to vocalize had been lost to my ignorant monolingual brain. “What if” is a dangerous game, but it taps my shoulder, whispering it’s wonder in my ear. 

I was eighteen when I fell in love for the first time. It’s hard to look back on now because it’s something I am still trying to forgive. I’ve existed with this feeling of inadequacy for so long, the faults I had in that relationship easily reinforce feelings of not being good enough, but when talking about love, it’s important to start with the fire blazing first. 

Bright blue eyes met an even brighter smile, and even though he fit with the muscular guys at the gym, I wasn’t immediately on my guard. I may have forgotten his name, but his face felt familiar. It wasn’t long before I needed those foreign words to help me ground the current of my teenage emotions. 

IKTSUARPOK – Inuit // The feeling of anticipation when waiting for someone to arrive. 

He wasn’t my anything, and yet my phone remained clutched in my sweaty palms, eagerly checking every few moments to see if he had responded. 

“Why don’t you just call him?” My aunt wondered.

I shook my head, thinking that she didn’t understand. “We’re just friends. I think he likes Heather, anyway.” 

The first year of our relationship felt like time suspended in a golden hued sunset, the light warm and perfect. Evenings spent alone, tangled limbs or contented conversations. My memory likes to paint those days in a blur of depth and intensity, only felt by a teenager in love. 

VIRAAG – Hindi // The emotional pain felt when being away from the one you love.

The physical pain of loving you was more excruciating than anything I had ever felt, and when we fought, it was terrible. It was so long ago, the why was lost shortly after the what, but I do remember the hysteria, the fleeting pieces of my sanity unraveling with a dead cell phone battery. That fight was the first one that truly broke a piece of me. Mom held me while I cried, her arms the only thing keeping me from shattering. 

That wasn’t the only fight, but it is the one that stands out in my mind as the beginning of the end. Viraag started to waver. I no longer minded if we were together or if we were apart, but that was normal, right? We were our own people, right?

I fell in love with you for your kindness and the genuine joy you shared for the people close to you. I loved your strength, and not the physical kind but the enduring kind. It came from enduring a life of being disappointed and having to work for everything you had. I loved how you made me feel beautiful. Sexy.

The evolution of love is most often discrete, only noticeable until open ocean surrounds you, and there is no sign of land. Distance separated us, even as we slept in the same bed. Your silence was deafening, until you reminded me of my inadequacy, and then that was all I could see.

LA DOULEUR EXQUISE – French // The heartbreaking pain of wanting someone you can’t have.

It crept up on me, the knowledge that we had grown and our pieces no longer fit. I didn’t know you like I should, and even though you were tight lipped, I should have pried apart your teeth and searched with light and tongue depressor. Nearly four years had passed, and we both stepped lightly, biting our tongues and neatly toeing around a reality neither one of us wanted to face. 

ONSRA – Boro language of India // Loving for the last time; that bittersweet feeling you get when you know a love won’t last.

It hurt to see you, someone who used to bring me so much happiness, my lover, my partner, my friend. Hindsight offers a certain clarity, but I still think it would have been easier if I hated you. The future I had unknowingly crafted for us shattered like a glass vase on a marble floor, and moving on was walking through the slivers barefoot. 

We had been eyeing the gun for a while. I may have pulled the trigger, but you loaded the chamber, fragile promises too weak to stand on their own two feet. You chose so many others over me, so I started to choose myself, convincing myself that we would both be better off without each other. 

Anger followed my heart ache, and I hated how easily you moved past me. There was a change just after the break, where I felt inundated with the reminder of you, kind, caring and good. How could you be so much for others, but you couldn’t be those things for me? 

RAZBLIUTO  – Russian // The sentimental feeling you can often feel towards someone you used to loved but no longer do.

You cross my mind every now and then, a bittersweet tinge every time I dream of travels to New Zealand. There’s so much hurt tangled around the good, and I don’t know if I’m more disappointed in you or myself. The way I made a clean break when you could have used a friend, is something I still haven’t forgiven. 

Falling in love for the first time is a physically exhausting experience. The ebb and flow of personal growth will sink or swim the relationship, and the cataclysmic way it feels, only intensifies the good, the bad and the ugly. Loving you wasn’t enough because I was tired of forcing our pieces to match. 

The romantic idealism of one true and happily ever after doesn’t prepare us for the depth of falling in love, the many layers of tumultuous emotions. I never thought I’d be able to love anyone the way I love crisp mountain air and breathtaking vistas. The tumultuous love was all I knew. I believed that was all I would ever have, but idealism and the english language fail us in love. 

MERAKI – Greek // Doing something with soul, creativity, or love.

Unconditional love is hard to define. If I were to paint the smooth lines, they would instill a wash of unwavering strength and comfort because to love unconditionally is the greatest kind of love there is. It’s a soul deep bond that is extended without consent, and it promises to be there no matter the circumstance. 

Love is terrifying and painful, but it’s worth every agonizing blow. It is one of the greatest experiences you will ever have, and you’ll remember that when the heartache has dimmed, and new love demands its way into your heart. Most often it finds you when you least expect, and I promise it will often be more than you ever imagined you could deserve.