I used to think you would know who the love of your life was while you were still with them. Maybe it would happen in the middle of a perfect date, while travelling somewhere beautiful together, or during one of those ordinary evenings when you were sitting next to each other, laughing at something stupid and quietly thinking, this is it.
But I don’t think it always happens that way.
Sometimes, you only realise it much later. Not while they are still beside you, but when they are already gone.
Maybe it happens on a completely ordinary day
You could be sitting in a beautiful garden somewhere. The weather is nice, your coffee tastes good, and your phone is quiet. Or maybe you’re lying on a comfortable sofa in a cosy room, watching a movie after a long day.
Nothing is wrong. Actually, everything is finally okay.
You are living the kind of peaceful life you once worked so hard for, and then, for absolutely no reason, you start crying.
Not because your life is bad, but because it suddenly hits you: you finally have the happy days you used to dream about, yet the person who once made you want to work so hard for those days is no longer there.
I think that kind of sadness is difficult to explain because you are grateful. You are okay. You might even be happy. But somewhere inside that happiness is a small empty seat reserved for someone who will never sit there again.
Sometimes success arrives after the person you wanted to share it with has left
There is something strange about finally getting the things you once wished for: a calmer life, a nicer room, a better job, trips you can finally afford, time to rest, maybe even the version of yourself you always wanted to become.
You should feel proud, and you do.
But sometimes, when you look around, there is one thought you cannot stop:
"I wish you could see this, princess."
Not because you necessarily want them back, but because once upon a time, they were part of the reason you kept going. Maybe they were the person you imagined telling when something good happened, the person you wanted to take somewhere beautiful, or the person you thought would someday sit across the table from you when life finally became easier.
Then life did become easier.
It just happened without them.
And then one day, you might see them again
Maybe you’re walking down a street you both used to know. You’re not thinking about them. You’re just going somewhere.
Then, from a distance, you see something familiar: the shape of a pair of glasses, the way someone wears their hair, a shirt you have seen a hundred times before.
And your body recognises them before your mind does.
For one second, everything inside you stops. You want to look again. You want to make sure. Maybe you even want to say their name.
But you don’t.
You keep walking and act as if you didn’t see anything.
Because sometimes, when someone tells you they want a life without you in it, the last loving thing you can do is respect that. Even when every part of you still remembers them. Even when seeing them turns an ordinary street into a place full of old memories.
At some point, you realise that loving someone and being part of their life are no longer the same thing.
Maybe love does not always end when a relationship ends
I used to think moving on meant no longer feeling anything. That one day, you would wake up and the memories would mean nothing. Their name would become just another name, and their face would become just another face.
But maybe moving on is not that clean.
Maybe sometimes you move on while still carrying a small, quiet love for someone. You stop contacting them, stop asking about them, stop hoping for another chance. You build a new routine, meet new people, laugh again and become okay again.
And still, somewhere deep inside you, you hope they are safe. You hope they are happy. You hope someone is loving them gently and that life is treating them well.
Not because you are waiting for them to return, but because once, their happiness mattered deeply to you. Perhaps a part of that never completely disappears.
Maybe that is when you finally understand who they were to you
The love of your life may not always be the person you grow old with.
Sometimes, maybe they are simply the person who changed the way you loved. The person who existed in your plans long after they had disappeared from your present. The person whose absence you notice most clearly when life becomes beautiful again.
And maybe the saddest part is that you finally understand how deeply you loved them only when there is nothing left to do with that love.
No message to send. No place to return to. No conversation to fix.
Just a quiet acceptance that two people can once mean everything to each other and still become strangers.
And if that day ever comes, when you see them from afar and choose not to walk towards them, maybe that is love too: to remember, to miss, to care, and still let them go if being back together does not make them feel happy.
Because sometimes loving someone means allowing them to live the life they chose, even when that life no longer includes you.
And then continuing to live yours.
Even with that empty seat still somewhere inside you.
Notes by Phanh.