Lessons learnt too late

I once loved a man who didn’t love me back. He thought he did and so did I but he didn’t.
He tried to love but only realised later that he didn’t know how, his ignorance cost him a lot.
It cost me everything.
No one at home taught him what love was. No one around told him what love meant.
No one bothered to show the young man the do’s and don’ts when it comes to women.
So, he did what he saw those who surrounded him did. He spoke to women the way he heard his father speak to his mother. He showed affection to women in the same way he saw his mother show men affection.
When the young man met me, what he knew got twisted and turned upside down and he was confused.
He was not aware that love meant he would give all of himself to me and have no control over his heart.
He didn’t know that there would come a time when I would be all that he thinks and dreams about and he would enjoy the feelings I gave him. He didn’t know that love meant that he would walk in the still of the dangerous night just to look into my eyes and say goodnight.
He didn’t know he would one day say “I love you Pops” and mean every word said.
He got so confused at the new feelings that grew stronger everyday but could not let the lessons on “love” he learnt as a child depart from his mind.
So the battle between his mind and heart continued within him.
He had sleepless nights on the person he was and the person he was becoming.

Eventually the war ended. There was calamity in his head and he knew who he was. He knew what he wanted. It was me he wanted. It was forever that he wanted me.
It was too late, because during the self battle, bullets, guns, swords and blood. I got hurt. And even though he found himself, it killed me. So we were no more.
He then had to learn new things, how to be alone, how to read about love, how to forgive, how pray for people you hate, and he did this with the new love of his life, heart and mind. God.