On The Mend

When I say, “I love you,” it’s not because I want you or because I can’t have you. It has nothing to do with me. I love what you are, what you do, how you try. I’ve seen your kindness and your strength. I’ve seen the best and the worst of you. And I understand with perfect clarity exactly what you are. You’re a hell of a person.

That’s how you stay alive. When it hurts so much you can’t breathe, that’s how you survive. By remembering that one day, somehow, impossibly, you won’t feel this way. It won’t hurt this much.

And that’s the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.

there is a hunger often associated with pain that you feel when you look at someone you used to love and enjoyed loving and want to love again though you know you can’t that gnaws at you as steadily as a mosquito some michigan summer churning his wings through your window screen ….

I have struggled to convince myself that these memories never happened. But each time I tried to push them into the dark, they came back stronger and more vivid than ever. Like cancer cells, these memories have taken root in my mind and eaten into my flesh.