Never forget the reasons you loved her.
They won't change.
Your feelings for each other might change. You might get more wrinkles. You might develop a hitch in your step, or begin snoring. She might get fat. She might not be so quick to smile. She might become a woman, instead of the girl you remember. Less naive, more complicated, more prone to your slights than she used to be.
Things used to be good. You only saw goodness in the beginning. The world was light and bright. No shadow, no clouds. You were running on pheromonal thinking.
She was always a step ahead. She knew the day would come when you didn't see her as perfect. She kept asking you to not put her on a pedestal. You didn't listen.
She braced herself for that day when you saw her as a normal, fallible woman. She knew it was coming, but you didn't.
That day came. The rose colored glasses came off, and you saw things as they were. It happened in a moment. You had lost your religion. She could tell.
It was like being kicked out of the Garden of Eden. Except this time, it happened in a microsecond. There was this moment. Before this moment, you were in love, I mean really in love. After this moment, you weren't.
You blinked. The before. The after. She was different somehow. Wasn't she? It wasn't you. It was her. This was real. Wasn't it?
Nothing would ever be the same. The earth subtly wobbled on its axis. The laws of physics just dislocated. The subtle nature of light had changed.
So you, the worshipper of the Platonic ideal, after you had reconciled with the thought that you'd been fooled - all this time, fooled - you began the slow disconnect. Emotional separation.
You wrestled with what to do. Because all this time you were convinced of your innate correctness. Your mind, your thoughts, these were bedrock truth. You could not conceive of the fact that perhaps your thinking was flawed. You? Wrong? Impossible. You spent your entire life assuming yours were the correct thoughts. Always. The center point of the universe, the fulcrum of the balance, the ascertainer of truth and fiction.
You thought, what is the best thing to do? You thought, how can we both come out of this healthy, undamaged? You thought it was possible - of course you did. You were delusional. You knew you were delusional, at a certain level, but the necessity of self-conviction of being correct suppressed the small little voice wanting to tell you you were wrong.
Stay and fight? Change something about yourself? Axiomatically impossible.
What did you owe her? Less and less, over time. You did owe her. You knew that. For the many sacrifices she'd made on your behalf. These things would come to you only with time. Right now, at this moment, you were pretty sure you didn't owe her much. And therefore, you released yourself of the burden of being fucking nailed to the relationship, of staying and making it work. Of being in a committed relationship.. You cut off your own safety line.
Good riddance. Watch the life raft float away.
===
So it's years later and many sessions of therapy later, and many late night beers raised to her honor, realizing what a fool you were.
You close your eyes. You can see the sun shining on her face. The lines of her face that used to take your breath away. The clear eyes. The strong chinline. Her dignity. Her innate nobility.
You can't forget. You should never forget.
Why I loved her. Why I love her still. Never forget.