Bitter Sweet

June 2007. I had just turned twenty-one. The church doors opened, and there he was..Mike, in the front row, no longer just my boy, my teacher, my secret keeper. He had a wife now. A real wife. Tall, dark hair cascading down her shoulders, dark brown skin shining like she belonged in a magazine, radiant and strong and full of life. She wasn’t me. She was everything I wasn’t, and the weight of that reality hit me like a physical blow.

We had grown up together in that sanctuary. Wednesdays and Fridays spent in ministry circles, laughing, debating, learning, feeling alive. I had been there since twelve, my grandma’s shadow always guiding me through the pews, the choir, the steps. And Mike...the one who knew how to make every corner feel like a secret only we shared.

Seeing him now, with her, so perfect, so whole in ways I once thought I had a claim to, tore something open in me. I cried in my seat because the memories were too vivid, too loud, too real. And yet, through the ache, I felt something else: pride. He had become a man, a soldier, a husband. He was thriving, and even if it wasn’t with me, it was still worth witnessing.

Bitter. Sweet. Emotion that no advice column could ever prepare you for. The universe had a way of teaching lessons, and this one was mine: love sometimes isn’t for keeping, but for learning, and letting go gracefully when the story moves past you.

–Leata