The person who taught me to live was the person I had to leave

Summer Eloise Asuncion 

My forehead always creases at the thought of schools teaching their students how to multiply numbers, solve mathematical problems, memorize scientific formulas, familiarize themselves with the definition of things, and understand social issues — but never how to understand love.

No one taught us how to decipher what one feels whenever their heart races at the sudden pop of a notification from that certain person’s message. 

No one taught us how to decode the meaning behind someone’s lingering stare, a smile you would rather see more often, a distance between two people that feels smaller than it should be, or the comfort of receiving good mornings and good nights for two years consistently, yet confusingly.

Schools never taught their students how to fall in love, nor did they teach them what to do when they finally do. They taught me how to graduate with honors, achieve titles in my extracurricular activities, and chase accomplishments. But they never taught me what to do when I found myself admiring someone so deeply that I wanted to pursue him, yet feared losing pieces of myself in the process.

I admired him for his softness — the way he cries over small things, the way he loves his parents so deeply, and the way he quietly worries about his future despite being only at the beginning of his twenties. He wanted to succeed, not only for himself, but for the people who raised him. I admired how he respected my time and encouraged me to sleep, even when I had just finished writing a long integration paper in a single day, and waited for the moment I could finally open my phone and talk to him for hours.

I admired how he sent random cat memes without reason. How, whenever I opened our conversation on a frustrating day, even when I was desperately trying to hold back my tears, he somehow made me laugh. Sometimes, I thought I was foolish for smiling at something so simple — at his silly jokes, his childish humor, and the little pieces of himself he unknowingly shared with me.

I love how he remembers every story I tell him — the people I love, the things that make me happy, the small details I sometimes forget I even mentioned. He would bring them up before I could even say them out loud, as if he had kept every piece of me somewhere safe.

I love how fond he is of children, how he would rather see them smile, even if the reason behind that smile came from the money he worked hard to earn. I love every part of him, and I admire every little thing he does — for his family, for his own happiness, and even for his cats.

But sometimes, I find myself scrolling through my notes, searching for an answer to whether school has ever taught me how to discern the difference between patience and waiting for nothing. 

The difficult thing about us has always been the distance and the time between us. We are drawn to each other, almost like magnets trying to find their way together, yet I learned that even the strongest attraction cannot always overcome the space separating two people. I study in Manila; he lives in Cebu. We are almost a thousand kilometers apart.

He is working, building a life of his own, figuring out how to live while helping provide for his family. Meanwhile, I am still studying, trying to survive university, trying to create a future for myself while carrying the weight of every uncertainty waiting after graduation.

Maybe that was the cruelest lesson love taught me: sometimes two people can want the same thing, care for each other deeply, and still find themselves standing on different roads.

He has been there for me for two years, yet within those two years, all I ever felt was yearning — even when everything between us felt stable. All I ever asked was: what were we during those months when we called ourselves friends, even though we both knew we were more than that?

And I guess that the hardest thing was to ask for the things you know you deserve from the person you love, yet the distance between you makes it impossible for him to hear even the loudest parts of you.

Even though I was comfortable, even though I was happy, even though my heart felt safe with him, I chose to leave.

Not because I wanted to hurt him. Not because I wanted to inflict pain on someone who had only shown me kindness. But because I could no longer allow myself to keep getting hurt by something neither of us knew how to fix.

My heart still bleeds, even though he was never the one holding the dagger and pointing it toward me. Maybe that was the cruelest part: he was not the person hurting me, yet my own hands kept pushing the dagger deeper, choosing to stay while watching myself slowly accept the mediocrity this love had been offering me.

And I guess I left so that I could finally live.

Not the kind of living where I forget him, because how could I erase someone who once made my ordinary days feel lighter? Not the kind of living where I pretend that everything we had meant nothing. Some people leave your life not because they were a mistake, but because their presence taught you something you were meant to carry forward.

I learned that love is not only measured by how much you can endure. Sometimes, love also means knowing when to stop waiting for a future that may never arrive. Sometimes, choosing yourself is not an act of selfishness — it is an act of courage.

Because leaving does not always mean the love was not enough. Sometimes, leaving means you have finally chosen to be enough for yourself.

And maybe school has taught me the textbook definition of love, but my experience has completely debunked that theory. Loving him showed me what love actually is, yet leaving him is the only way for me to teach myself how to live. 

It makes me wonder why schools even try to teach us love when he himself, alone, taught me more than any classroom ever could.