I feared that loving someone and losing someone are the extremes of feelings. That there’s nothing that can make things any happier or any more painful.

I was wrong- there are so many in-betweens.

This is for the 30-day writing challenge I’m currently doing.

I was naive. Just graduated my way out of high school. And then, for some inexplicable play of fate as a freshman, partner-projects and irregular students, I met him. He was my upperclassman coming from the the same course.

It was all fast. A week of knowing each other and I felt like our fates were intertwined. I looked up to him- how he juggles his time to tend to his classes, how he sends himself to school, how he’s so ambitious and how he cooks for me, and how he looks at me as if I’m the most precious diamond.

I would say it was the perfect teenage plot for a YA novel. Boy meets girl. Climax. They go separate ways.

But I’m thankful. Because if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have known how it feels to love and be loved. If it weren’t for him I would never have found out that life can be a beautiful place. If it weren’t for him I wouldn’t have thought that someone as imperfect as me can find someone and feel for someone as much as my own. And while you feel all of that, it can also all just be gone.

It was a bliss, truly. He was one of my greatest lessons. I would never regret every little second of us- when our eyes met the first time in mutual connection to the unspoken silence of a goodbye years apart. It all became a part of me, of where I am, of who I became, and I’m content. I’m grateful.

Talking about him doesn’t feel weird anymore. It doesn’t make me miss him nor want him. I talk about him as a lesson- because he was truly one. I may have had myself hurt, but it still feels as if everything was according to a certain plan – God’s plan.

We met, we didn’t last long, but it was long enough for me to feel gratified of the things I picked up in the process. And that’s something I’ll treasure.