You…

I still smile when I see you. Even though my heart is breaking, I still smile. Because like the moon, I can still give light even when I’m incomplete…

Then the little voice in my head asks me again “Why are you still holding on to someone who has already let go of you?” And for the life of me, I cannot answer because I don’t know the answer. Because I’m not even sure if I’m holding on to something that was there in the first place. I don’t know if it was real or imagined. I don’t know if it was an idea or if it was my reality. So, I can’t explain why I’m holding on, why I can’t let go. I just know that it feels easier to hold on than to accept the fact that it’s gone. Because then I can pretend that it’s still there. And I don’t have to deal with the emptiness that is sure to take over the moment I accept that it no longer exists.

Some days, I realize that I have thought so much about the way I lost you that I have forgotten how I found you, or how you found me, or how we found each other. I can’t remember what the early days were like. They seem so far away. I can’t remember what must have been such an intense spark that it threatened to burn everything down around us. When I try to go back in my mind, I see visions of happier times, but I can’t remember how we made that ‘happy’. And that’s because for a long time now, I’ve been in this awful limbo – stuck in the place where you said you needed time and space, and still waiting for you to come back. But you never did. You never will. And moving on feels like I would be giving up on us. Moving on means I will definitely lose you for good. But I must be silly. Because you gave up on us. I should have known. The moment you were no longer afraid to lose me, was when you stopped needing me, when you stopped loving me in the way that you did, the way that made me feel safe and protected.

I should have known when I could no longer hear the affection in your voice, when you stopped addressing me with terms of endearment, when I felt the hostility and resentment that sometimes came through in your interactions with me, I should have known then that you were gone, forever lost to me. But my silly little heart, always hopeful, always needful, always fearful. My silly little heart would not let me see what was happening for what it was. To you, I was a phase. But to me, you were for ever. And now that my forever is gone, I don’t know where to start. In an ocean of uncertainty, you were my anchor, my ‘person’ like you used to say; you were ‘home’. So, this is me without you – Lost. Adrift. Unsure. Alone. It haunts me, how I so easily believed that I was the one place you never wanted to leave, how I made you my happy place, my safe space, without ever once contemplating you not being there. I guess that’s why I feel uprooted, un-sheltered, exposed.

Maybe it was the wrong time to fall in love. Maybe you were the wrong person. But I still did. Because what I felt for you, felt right, felt real, felt true. And I gave myself over to it completely, against my better judgment, against the warnings of those closest to me. Because I’ve always chased happiness and anything that I thought would give me it. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone away, or maybe I should have, because it certainly would have ripped me apart to watch you fall out of love with me. Hearing it happen from a distance was probably a kinder option. And somewhere deep inside my heart, I think I know that being around would not have made a difference. You’d still have fallen out of love with me anyway.

I still miss you. I still ache to talk to you, be held by you. I still wake up with thoughts of you, and still see your face when I close my eyes at night. I miss my ‘favourite place in the world’, the space between your arms and just below your shoulders. I miss sharing my innermost thoughts with you, my fears, my worries, my joys and triumphs. I miss spending time with you, the banter, the laughter and even the silly disagreements. I miss dancing with you, binge-watching TV with you, riding with you, sharing a meal with you. I miss having someone to come back to, someone to try things with, someone to plan things with. I miss having someone to sit and be silent with, or to have a random conversation with over a bottle of wine. I miss my person, the one who knows me so deeply and completely. I miss my partner in crime, my lover, my friend.

Time will heal. But I need distance too, if I am truly to get over you…