[No new posts will be published here]

Hey. I don't know if this will ever find you, or if it even should. But if it does, someday, or somehow, I hope by then, we can remember it all in a way that softens the edges of what we couldn't hold.  Before the beginning, I kept buying myself more time. Telling myself I needed it. More days, more weeks, more moments to understand you, to understand us, to think until I drowned, to stop thinking when it hurt too much, to feel what I kept denying, to forgive what I didn't want to admit, to quiet the storm inside, to loosen my grip, to finally let you go. But every time I said: not today, maybe later, maybe after the next small milestones. After we met. After a week. After your special day. After my birthday. After yours. After December 21. God, it stings just naming that date. And maybe I would keep doing that. Keep pushing the line further away, making excuses, inventing new deadlines just so I could write you back into existence. So I could keep you here, on the page, ev...

You never liked birthdays. I always wanted to celebrate you. Maybe that’s why we’re not here. It’s your birthday today. Last year, when the day ended, I told myself. Next year, I’d do better. Next year, you’d feel safer. I thought I could give you that. It’s your birthday today. I hope you’re kinder to yourself. Or maybe I’m still pretending I know what’s best for you. It’s your birthday today, and I still hope you heal. The kind that makes you believe. Or maybe I’m still arrogant to think I ever knew enough of you. It’s your birthday today. May your life be long. Your patience, your strength. Your feelings. The ones that make you laugh like the world’s still worth it, or the ones that push you to do whatever it takes. I really hope you find what’s yours. And it finds you. I hope nothing but the best, for you. Today is your birthday. Happy birthday.

But I searched too long. And I got freaked out. It terrified me, if I ever lost the last thread that ties me back. I remember telling myself it was a memory. It wasn’t. It was me. Locking the door in my head so he couldn’t leave again. I drag his shadow back every time it slips away. It’s still that much. Still that deep. Maybe I never forgot. Maybe I never even tried. Because forgetting means losing him twice. And I’m not ready for that. Oh, how do I live with this? Carrying the ghost I chose to keep.

Which one is better. When I was still afraid this would fall apart, or when I longed for that fear after it finally did. I told myself I’ve found the answer. I don’t want to go back, but I’d give anything to live it once more. I don’t want to keep imagining how it could have been, but I do want to keep replaying how it was. I want to let it go, but I keep myself coming back for one more glimpse. And I don’t know how to walk through this, or if walking through it is even possible. I just want to stop wanting.

Leave. Leave before I start wanting you back. Before my hands forget how to be empty. Go. Just go. Go faster. Tear yourself out of my chest. Take the sound of your name with you. I’m not drowning again. I will not go under again. Leave by tonight. No, leave now. Hurry. Leave far. Far enough that my body forgets your shape. Far enough that my mind loses your scent. Stop. Don’t knock on the hollow I’ve been living in. Please. Don't ever slip into my head again. It’s all that I have left. And if you do, I won’t even have the strength to hate you.

Under his raincoat, pressed against his back. The younger me was still learning how to want something without knowing how to keep it close. The last time, his fingers threaded through mine. We spoke about that rain, that day, the movie that night. Today, I’m here again. Carrying work as an excuse, though it keeps brushing against the memory I pretend not to touch. Back when us still felt possible. Back when I thought we’d grow old under the same black-and-white blanket. But now, the ache calls me by name. I know the shape of this tightness, how it swells inside my chest. Only this time, it doesn’t pierce clean through. It’s a long, blunt needle pressing deeper. Cruel enough to let me feel every ours that I’ve lost.

I've kept my eyes from chasing your name, taught my hands not to reach  for any trace of you. I thought I'd drawn the line.  Thought this might work. I tried to finish the feelings, patiently.  Sometimes still letting them stop by as if they might leave on their own.  I thought I could. I thought I'd grown. Then I saw you. Not on purpose.  Not in any way I could prepare for. And just like that, you tore through every wall I've been rebuilding.  Hole after hole. Until there was no wall at all. So what now? The gap cuts again. And God, I miss you so much, in a way that makes me unsure I could survive this twice. 

Today I read: “You won’t find the same person twice, not even in the same person.” And something in me sank. Because I knew I wasn’t holding on to him. I was holding on to the boy he used to be. The one who smiled like he meant it, the one who hadn’t yet learned to guard his heart so well. And maybe I stayed because I believed that version of him was just buried. For so long, I didn’t know who I was saying goodbye to. The person he became, or the version I kept alive in my memory. Maybe that’s the strangest part: How the love I lost feels more like a life I dreamt than one I lived. And maybe, just maybe, the grief isn’t about losing him. But finally letting go of the person he never promised to stay as. And I guess, now, that’s okay.