Top Tweets for #iAmWriting

Maybe love is an illusion. I've wondered about that. Because if something was real, why did it disappear? Why can two people once unable to imagine a life apart eventually become strangers who don't even know how to speak to each other? Why does someone who once knew exactly how you liked your coffee eventually forget you ever drank it? Why does forever sometimes have an expiration date? Perhaps that's what makes us question whether it was ever real. We think permanence is proof. If it lasted, it was love. If it ended, it must have been an illusion. But I'm not sure anymore. A sunset is real even though it lasts minutes. A childhood is real even though you can never return to it. A conversation can change your entire life and still end in an hour. Why should love be any different? Maybe some love is meant to stay. And some love is meant to change us. That doesn't make the second kind false. There are people I no longer speak to who once knew parts of me nobody else had reached. There are memories that still hurt, even though I wouldn't go back. There are names I don't want to hear anymore and moments I would never trade away. Was that love? I think it was. Even if we eventually became strangers. Maybe the illusion isn't love. Maybe the illusion is the word forever. We attach forever to something because we desperately want the beautiful thing in front of us to be permanent. And when it isn't, we rewrite the entire past. “It wasn't real.” “She never loved me.” “He was pretending.” “Maybe I imagined everything.” Sometimes that's easier than accepting something much harder: It was real. It mattered. It changed you. And it still wasn't meant to last. Perhaps ephemeral doesn't mean meaningless. Perhaps some things are temporary precisely because their purpose was never to stay. They came into our lives. Opened something. Taught us how deeply we could feel. And then left us carrying a version of ourselves that didn't exist before them. So maybe the better question isn't: “Was it real if it didn't last?” Maybe it's: “Why do we believe something has to last forever before we're willing to call it real?”