We’ve grown-up on a steady diet of rom-coms. Kisses in the rain, boom-boxes outside of windows, grand gestures and stories that finish with ‘I do.’

Hollywood's version, edited to perfection, often disillusions partakers of reality's unscripted romance. Eventually, we become cynics.

Ask anyone, what is love? How do you know when you’ve found it? How do you know that it is right?

If one reads this article in hopes of a comprehensive answer, then I hate to disappoint...but I haven’t quite figured Love out myself.

Personally, my interactions with Love echo Daren Colbert’s profound words.

“...and when they ask,

Have you been in love?

I will look down at my hands

and say, Not the lasting kind.”

Who was he? He was my wake-up text; my secret grin; my sun whom I orbited; my plans; my warmth; my person.

When I asked him, why me, he'd smile and caress me with compliments. See, he knew that "he is a man of black and white, and [I] was color, all the color he had" (Fredrik Backman).

How did you meet? Mark Anthony once said, “When I look back to the day we met, I still see the start of my favorite love story.”

Our meeting was ordinary, truly, of no consequence. We were racing across time and space. Comets destined for a crash. A crash that irrevocably altered our shape so that only our broken edges fit.

What was your love like? Loving him was like walking. Over time, I became attune to his rhythm. In fact, the very atoms of a room seemed to hum with his presence.The substance of our togetherness was based on a childlike friendship; giddy laughter at inopportune moments, lame commentary, inside jokes and a studied knowledge of the other’s true essence.

“I’m not nostalgic

but this heart,

is not mine anymore.

It yearns for the home

that you made.”

-Yatin Mehndiratta

Why do you speak of him in the past tense? Noor ul Deen captures the reason perfectly, “We both were on different pages of the same book.” No matter how many pages we each flipped...

We used to argue about which one of us would get to publish our love story. Then, after the end, I didn't have the strength to pick up the pen or type a single memory.

Inviting an audience into my heart, especially the parts where he set up camp, tested the limits of my vulnerability. Since he said 'I love you’ a million different ways...

“I don’t want to write

love poems,

because they only make me

think of love,

and love only makes me

think of you.”

-Daren Colbert

He is still my case of writer’s block.

“Wait,” you say, “but didn’t you love him? Why wasn’t love enough?”

Time has aided my quest to discover the words that I did not have then.

I love you as you are. I love you too much to ask you to change. I love you enough to be the one to walk away.

Honestly, I struggled to walk without him.

Those first few weeks of separation was akin to 'Freaky Friday'; thrown into a daily routine where something, or rather someone, was missing. Truly, who I was without you was a foreign concept.

Typical of asteroids with interlocked orbits, we struggled at the intersections. We both wanted to take away a souvenir; breaking off pieces of each other in the process.

A friend showed me a quote from M. Sosa that reads, “Stop breaking your own heart by letting the wrong person back into your life each time they come knocking.They can’t break your heart if they can’t get inside.”

Thereafter, I resolved to ignore the knocking. He pounded at my heart's door. Time and again I sent him away. I guess, I shouldn’t have been surprised when finally, he gave up.

Now, I won’t blame him for moving on. I tried to do the same.

However, broken hearts cannot be underestimated. Gluing the shards back together requires painstaking care. Yet, hearts are resilient and so the old-ticker keeps beating.

Don’t become disenchanted, but walk forward with anticipatory hope.

Perhaps, for a time, you walk alone. That’s okay, give yourself grace and remember your worth while you wait.

Romance that comes to an end may be painful, but – arguably- “it is a [more] terrifying thing when love finally works” (JH Hard).

Love, so it seems to me, is noticing the little things; being present for the big things; adoring the insecurities; cuddling the fears; dreaming tomorrows; and holding hands as well as hearts.

Love is individually defined because love is an individual.

Dedicated to this article's inspiration. If you write our story, please don't change a thing.

At one time, I would've asked for a happy ending, but not at the expense of our authenticity. We can agree that genuine love is hard to come by.

P.S. You matter to me.