The Girl Who Lived

5 JULY 2020 23:07 | It’s eight months later and my heart still remembers like it was yesterday. It shouldn’t hurt anymore that you’re gone and that you didn’t say goodbye but it still does. It does, and today, my heart ached and howled in pain because it still hurts that you’re gone. That you didn’t come back. That you haven’t come back. I know you’re probably not coming back but I can’t help but ask if maybe somehow you think about me too sometimes. If some nights you also wonder about the taste of my lips and the warmth of my body against yours. If your heart still echoes the sound of my name. Does your mouth still call for me when you sleep? I’m not saying it still eats me alive but what I would give to know, to have your hands rest against my cheek again. To have you lead me into a sea of people and not fear of getting lost. To maybe lose you for a minute only to find you looking for me too. To have some more time with you even if they’re mostly scattered and fragmented. To have to count days and nights and wait for many tomorrows because it means there is still a future with you. There is still a tomorrow with you to look forward to. Anything. I’d take the fights, all the lonely hours, all the frustration of never ever having enough time with you. Of only being the third, fourth, even fifth on your list of priorities. I’m saying I want you to come home. I’m tired of pretending I’m done letting you go.

11 JUNE 2020, 23:58 | “You have to stop feeling like you’re responsible for everyone”, my brother kept telling me. I swear I have been trying. Creating distance and boundaries where there used to be none. Everything has been hard for everyone, and even though this presented its own difficulties for me.. I am blessed enough to have gone through this unscathed. Blessed enough to be in these four corners and only worry about how to heal. I have thought about myself more times in the past three months.. asked myself about how I’m doing.. spent more time being with myself a lot more in the past three months than the past twenty years of my life. I’m still in this journey, and I still keep finding myself wanting to build homes for other people. Even if they never asked me to. Even though they may not even want me to. I’m still learning. I’m still trying to change this. Still learning to pour onto my cup first, instead of filling up others’. I’ll get there. I’ll get there.

7 JUNE 2020 00:23 | Some days are harder than others. Tonight is one that is colder than others. My longing is much stronger and the emptiness more vivid. If I’m honest, I’ve been feeling this way more often these days. But each time I do, life reminds me that there is not only one type of love.. and that I have many. I have a good life. I have friends who feel like family, and a family that truly is home. Love comes in many different forms, and I have the good kind. I have a good life.

Lonely nights. I tell myself, tonight's just a little colder because winter is already here. Yes, blame the weather for every single thing. It is, in fact, the temperature that decided to drop all of a sudden that is to blame. Not my body who's longing for warmth. Not the empty side of the bed I want another body to fill with. I try not to think about how the colder season has only started. Many nights like this will still follow.. most of which are even harsher and more unforgiving than this. I tell myself the heat from my own body is enough. I can keep myself warm. I have been alone for a long time. I have already developed the thick skin required to not get frost bite. And yet, I'm still waiting for the Sun.