I’m still here. Same as I always have been, same as I always will be. Everyone else I know comes and goes, vanishes and appears, lives and dies, says goodbye. I cannot do these things. I am the only personal constant that I know of. My existence thoughts and feelings are unavoidable and follow my being every step I take and every thought I make.
Yes, I always knew this. Since I was young and thought that being by myself for all time that I would ever know could be fine, that I could always change myself if I disliked myself. That shortsightedness has hurt me, I believe. I assumed that everything else would pass if I could just wait and nothing was consistent, permanent, and inescapable besides my existence. I’ve learnt through experience that’s a falsification.
I am more than me. I live as the me that I know and exist as the being you knew. I live as the underachiever child who can’t remember a time when I wasn’t miserable to some degree. I exist as the unhappy girl who was all too melancholy and uncomfortable with revealing herself to you beyond the facade of stoic, quiet, and dull.  But you saw me for more than what I wanted you to see.
I exist as that girl that found you god knows how long ago now and pushed and prodded to open. I exist as the girl (that would never admit to such a thing, mind you) who would quit what they were doing to speak to you again about things that I remember more than I have any right to given what I’m known as now. Things that didn’t matter and seemed silly but felt so warming, filling, and happy to talk about. Maybe because it was just with you. Almost certainly, really. I appreciated what I rationalized as a deep friendship and hoped you would never think more of it than that. But you saw me for more than what I wanted you to see.
Yes, I exist negatively as well. The bad things come with the good. I exist as the girl that went through bad things, none of them a fault of yours, and couldn’t cope. I exist as the girl that didn’t know what to do now that you cracked my mask of non-emotion, apathy and indifference. I exist as the girl that saw it far too unbefitting to be true to my emotions and retreated again. The girl that went back into her shell, her impenetrable home. Her inescapable home. We stopped speaking because I was obsessed with the idea that you were so much more than what you were. That every step I took and every breath I had bothered you, that I was an overtly attached animal and needed to let you breathe.
And then you were gone before I realised. And I thought it was fine, almost. I assumed that it would pass if I could just wait and it was fine because I was the true constant. And then you didn’t miraculously reappear. And that wasn’t it, I believe. I think that my love vanished as well. My willingness to feel love, to love myself, to love others, to love the world. And it was replaced with something else.
Yes, I live like this now. I live as the hell-creature who refuses to feel love, feels sick at happiness and frightens themself with the idea of moving on. I live as that constant thorn in the side of everybody I know who needs to lighten up, get over it because teen love never lasts and I’ll find a lovely woman one day. This has become what I define as me. A static harsh mess of misery longing and stinging nostalgia for something that I lost, entirely of my own fault. I’ve learnt through experience that the emotion of misery is a constant. That’s how it is.
Wherever I go, I’m me. Wherever I go, there’s misery. I cannot escape from my desire to have you back, my desire to apologize for every single thing I ever did that either of us regarded as bad. That desire to hopelessly atone over and over. And I cannot escape this. I can’t see you again and I can only see myself because moving forwards isn’t something I deserve. And I’ll never be able to go for as long as I live. Which, to me, is all time.
I’m still here. Same as I always have been, same as I always will be.