CNCO & PM Imagines (complete)

5 Past Loves: Why (CNCO- Joel)

Why I loved was a close friend of mine who passed away. He told me after he was diagnosed, that the thought of his inevitable death wasn't what saddened him the most. The worst part of it all was the fact that he never really felt like he got to experience true love. Joel wouldn't get to have those emotions, good and bad. Of being hurt, and of being held.

The day he told me about his diagnosis was one of the hardest days I ever had to experience. No amount of prior heartache could ever add up to the feelings I felt as I sat with him in his childhood bedroom as we cried over his reality. The reality that no matter how much love he had experienced through family and friends, he would never get to know what it was like to truly fall in love with someone. To be so vulnerable and open to them. Giving them the power to destroy you and leave you broken but hoping that they never would. The chance to really fall head first and dive in with so much confidence that nothing could stop you.

That was what hurt the most. Watching every day as he envied those around him who had the chance to feel everything that love had to offer. To watch him grow weaker and weaker but not being able to do anything about it. I couldn't help him feel everything he so desperately wanted to feel and maybe that's why I never got over his death. Because for him, falling in love was so much more than a "happily ever after" or an inevitable moment in life. No, for him it was something he was robbed of. Something he would never get to experience for himself.

After he passed, the words he spoke to me that first day stuck with me the most. Teaching me to see that one of the greatest gifts we have of being alive is the ability to give, receive, and even lose love. There are so many others like him, who's lives end before having any of those experiences and if I can love even half as much as he did while he was alive, I'd be doing love justice. Because what a waste if we don't strive to love in our lives. He made me understand why love is so important. Why waste this life not loving when there are so many people out there who so desperately crave love but never get the chance to experience it?

If we are the lucky ones in life who get to go through this crazy journey of fearing love and finding comfort in it then why aren't we giving it our everything? After all I know that's what Joel would have wanted me to do.

He is the reason why I love.

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