There are encounters that change you quietly. You don’t realise it at the time. You only understand what happened when you look back and notice that everything after was different.

I fell in love for the first time in 2021. I was twenty one years old. I won’t say where. I won’t say who. But I will say this. I had no idea what I was doing.

Not in a careless way. In the most innocent way possible. I knew how I felt. I just didn’t know how to carry it. I didn’t know how to communicate what was happening inside me. I didn’t know how to regulate myself under pressure, how to understand another person’s world, how to be someone worth loving back. I thought declaring love was enough. I was wrong. Love is far more complicated than declaration.

So I lost it. And I’ve been carrying that ever since.

The poem:

So I lost it. And I’ve been carrying that ever since.

So many encounters have changed me,
My first was reading history,
My second was learning strategy,
My third was love,
And forgetting the first two when she walked in the room for the first time.

My fourth was with mysticism,
When the world felt like it was touching me,
My fifth was with time,
When I saw my community,
And learnt to say goodbye.

I carry with me bitter regrets,
Of the chances I missed with you,
I was too young to know how to love you,
Now after all this time,
I’m still too hurt to forget.

I imagine you’ve seen me from the outside,
Watched me travel and get lost in games,
Watched me learn, meet others and perform,
But all of that vanishes at the thought of you.

I was too young to know how to love you,
But I still love you,
Now I’m too young to know what to do with my future,
But I know that somehow it would make sense if you were still here.

I was too young to know how to make you laugh,
Now after all this time,
I’m too hurt to forget.

–

I don’t blame my younger self. I’ve made peace with the fact that it was the innocent mistake of someone who hadn’t yet learned how to hold what he was given. There’s no anger there. Just a quiet understanding.

But I won’t pretend the longing is gone either.

The deepest part of me is my longing for you.
It’s deeper than my innermost questions and stronger than my fears.
An entire year’s worth of experience can fade away at a single thought of you.

When you fall in love for the first time and you think to yourself this is it, this is the person I want to spend my life with, the rest of the world suddenly makes sense. Your direction becomes clear. Your role feels real. I was naive to think that way. You can’t build your future around another person. Your individual story is your own in the end.

But there’s still a part of me that believes if she were in the picture, things would have made more sense. Not because I need someone to complete me. But because when you’ve felt that kind of clarity once, even briefly, you don’t forget what it felt like to know where you were going.

I was too young to know how to love you.

I’m still learning what to do with that.