c.r.

People will tell you, always with the best intentions, that one day you are going to wake up and realize that you are okay, and your life is not immediately over because they are no longer a part of it. And this is true, though it’s not the net positive that we are so quick to label it as. Because it’s not as though you simply wake up one day and proclaim yourself fine, suddenly hearing birds chirp and children laugh after months of only your own oppressive silence. You simply start to forget, feeling the acute pain of the loss less and less as each day goes on. There will come a day when you don’t care, but you won’t notice it, because you will have other things to think about. ... Of course, you never really forget anyone, but you certainly release them. You stop allowing their history to have any meaning for you today. You let them change their haircut, let them move, let them fall in love again. And when you see this person you have let go, you realize that there is no reason to be sad. The person you knew exists somewhere, but you are separated by too much time to reach them again.

In the end, I think that I will like that we were sitting on the bed, talking & wondering where the time had gone.

I remember the end of the first visit: I watched her walk down the sidewalk as the bus pulled out of the station, yanking me from her receding figure. As the countdown to our next reunion was reset to a dauntingly high number, the emotion was so raw, so overwhelming, that it seems impossible to describe without clichés or platitudes. Suddenly every mawkish pop song made sense – it makes you want to write bad poetry. It’s not as devastating after almost three years, which I attribute to comfort rather than any abatement of emotion. At the beginning, I was like a baby who mistook someone leaving my field of vision for ceasing to exist. I had suffered a few bad experiences in the past and could only hope this would be different. It certainly felt different, but I still worried. “How can I be apart from her?” I’d wonder. “What if something changes? What if it’s never this good again?” Now, I have faith. I know she’ll be back and the feeling will be back with her. I just have to wait. We’ll be saying hello again soon.

Try to regain what you’ve lost but have trouble expressing yourself. Choose all the wrong words; speak your own limited language. You’ll mean to say, “I’m keeping busy,“ or “How was your day?” or “I’ve been reading this fantastic book you’d like; you should borrow it,” but all of the sentiments just spill out of your mouth as “I miss you.” Every gap in conversation caulked with “I miss you.” You’ll momentarily question where all of your other thoughts went, you had them five minutes ago but these three words are all you can manage to articulate. Miss someone until they come back, or until you come back, until their absence in your life becomes something to be avoided at all costs. Miss them until you don’t have to anymore, until you’re reunited in your favorite booth in your favorite restaurant ordering your favorite meal, miss them until it feels like you never left. Or miss them until you can’t anymore, until the things you miss are identified and cataloged as things and not a person, until you figure out that easy company and long talks and unblinking, all-knowing eye contact will find you again the way they found you the first time. Miss someone until you don’t.