I Will Always Love you - by Oluwadamilola Adesina

I loved happily ever afters. I mean, boy meets girl, they fall in love, fight some battles, but somehow still get to be with each other. My thought was that true love should conquer all and, amidst all the pain in this world, a happy ending is required, please. But perhaps the most profound love stories are not the ones that end in happily ever afters. Love always has to cost something. Romeo and Juliet, for one. It is a remarkable love story, but for my own bias, I still don't like it. Then there's Titanic. Jack going under—I always think about the several alternatives through which he could still have been alive. I think about Rose too, and how the remaining part of her life would have been. Miserable, I always thought. But it wasn't actually. She got married. She had children. She lived. Yet something she said “He exists now only in my memory.” Love sometimes doesn't end when the relationship does. I know love to be a powerful force. You can't deny it, you can't escape it, and it gives as much as it takes. I love the concept of love between a man and a woman. I imagine it to be ravaging, the kind of love that makes people a little uncomfortable. I want it to be enduring. I want it to last a lifetime. I can't imagine a life where love didn't have her way One of my favourite songs, I Will Always Love You, written by Dolly Parton is really not a love song. It is a heartbreak song. <img alt="" src="/media/inline_insight_image/dolly-parton-performs-concert-universal-1104415935_1.webp"/>It is about walking away from love. Maybe this is real life. Love can be real but still not be enough. It can be as powerful as I imagine it to be and still be deficient in some form that prevents one from staying. So I'll go, but I knowI'll think of you every step of the way Between happy endings and tragic afters, there is a middle ground where we simply walk away—the love still burning, but lacking the ability to stay. And it brings to the fore that not all love stories should be Cinderella and the Prince, a fairytale ending neatly tied with a ribbon. Sometimes love happens, and it is real, and it is beautiful, but it doesn't stay. And when such love happens, the aching, the longing, and everything that makes love feel real, I think it hurts more than a tragic ending. Real love can want, but still let go. Real love can hold, but still loosen its grip. Real love knows when we have reached the end of the road. It doesn't always end with anger and hatred. Sometimes it ends with another kind of love—the kind that understands that two people can love each other and still be better off apart. Love has to cost a thing. The human mind hates endings. It tries to rationalise things when they end. We look for reasons. We look for someone to blame. We create villains because it is easier to accept the end of something when we can point to the person who ruined it. That is why this kind of ending is perhaps the hardest to accept. The other person is not a villain. There is no great betrayal. No unforgivable offence. No spectacular reason to hate them. You just don't see things working anymore. And I think that can hurt the most. Yet, strangely, it is the most freeing when you finally get there. When the guilt is released. When the pain softens. When the hope that things might somehow become what you wanted finally lets go. When your heart becomes open to forgiveness and peace. You can still feel the love, but there is an acceptance that it cannot be. This, I say, is love too. Even if it doesn't fit into the Disney version of love. Dolly Parton really wrote a beautiful song about how you can feel everything and still let go. There is a kind of love in that which I think only a few people can carry well, because we are so accustomed to either a good ending or a tragic one. We want someone to blame. We want the story to have a villain. We want the pain to have a reason. We want to hold every loved one forever. Maybe we hold the bittersweet memories still. Maybe we taste their names on our lips one last time and let go And when you finally get there, perhaps you don't remember the love with bitterness. You remember it with gratitude. Gratitude for the love that was. For the person who made you feel alive. For the moments that were real, even if they did not last as long as you wanted them to.<img src="/media/inline_insight_image/snap01142.jpg"/>I hope life treats you kindAnd I hope you have all you've dreamed ofAnd I wish you joy and happinessBut above all this, I wish you love So then, you say I will always love you. <blockquote>I hold it true, whate'er befall;I feel it, when I sorrow most;'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.</blockquote> May this love not find me sha. Lol

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