Sometimes you can’t control where your mind goes. You just have to train it not to go there anymore.

So often we try to make other people feel better by minimizing their pain, by telling them that it will get better (which it will) or that there are worse things in the world (which there are). But that’s not what I actually needed. What I actually needed was for someone to tell me that it hurt because it mattered. I have found this very useful to think about over the years, and I find that it is a lot easier and more bearable to be sad when you aren’t constantly berating yourself for being sad.“

There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.

It’s messing people up, this social pressure to “Find your passion” and “Know what it is you want to do”. It’s perfectly fine to just live your moments fully, and marvel as many small and large passions, many small and large purposes enter and leave your life. For many people there is no realization, no bliss to follow, no discovery of your life’s purpose. This isn’t sad, it’s just the way things are. Stop trying to find the forest and just enjoy the trees.

My sweetest heart, I wish I could take this pain away from you, just for one day. I wish I could help you, tell you that everything will be okay again, but I can’t lie to you. That’s something I never could. The only thing I can tell you is the truth. The truth behind losing one of the most important persons in your life. And the truth is, it will hurt. It will hurt so badly that you will barely be able to breathe. And you will cry, cry so much that you think it will never stop. And you will feel lonely, so lonely like never before in your life. And you will grieve, lie in your bed and just want to make it stop, to disappear. But it won’t, not for a long time. And all of that is okay, because all of that will happen. There are no words, no actions that can prevent it, nothing to make it any better. You just have to go through this, and oh how badly I wish you didn’t have to. The only thing I can offer you is my embrace when it hurts so much that you think you might fall apart. My promise to kiss all of your tears away. My hand that will hold you when you think no one understands you. My unconditional love, because that’s the best I can give. And oh my sweetest heart, how I wish I could help you, but we both know, I can’t.

So we shared something bigger than the both of us. So we haven’t spoken in three months and I heard you’re making music. Your friends have stopped asking about California. Your mother has stopped bringing me up in conversation. And you deleted my phone number. The last time I called you apologized for not recognizing my voice over the phone static. And so that was the last time. Chances are, there will be no other time. Because the truth is, life hardly ever gives you good things in two’s and neither one of us believes in second chances anyways. It’s been three weeks since then and today they played that Beatles song we both love. Three months ago, I would have missed you. Mostly, anyways. Today, I’m not sure if there’s any room left for grief. There isn’t even enough room left for guilt to settle in. We loved each other once. Never got around to doing it twice. And maybe that isn’t such a bad thing anymore. You’re off somewhere chasing dreams meeting girls pretty enough to write songs about. And I am here. In a smaller city than the one you live in and I am taking back my hope. And for that I am sorry if you wake up tomorrow empty handed but it has always been mine. I hold it between my hands and I fall in love again.

I’ve learned that I can’t change what happened. I can’t change my feelings. I can’t change hers. I can’t change the pain she brought me and I brought her. I can’t change the night everything got ruined. But I can change how I handle the situations that lie ahead. I want to keep positive and not depressed. I wanna find myself during all this. I’ve been given an opportunity to redefine who I am in a positive way. Yeah it sucks that I lost her. I think about her everyday. I miss our adventures and conversations and stupid ideas. But I don’t miss not knowing who I was. I don’t miss belonging to another person. I don’t miss giving myself up entirely to feel loved and accepted by someone who didn’t want me the way I wanted them. But that’s okay. I believe everything happens for a reason. And in 7 years from now when I’m sitting in my office with a client and they are telling me about their life struggles and how they feel like they aren’t worth loving and don’t understand why someone doesn’t love them back and why depression is a dick I can look them in the eyes and honestly tell them.. “I’ve been there too”. This is a journey. I’m not sure where the road is leading me. Sometimes I worry that it might be a dead end, sometimes I hope it’s actually a cliff. But what I mainly hope for, is that it gives me purpose and rejuvenation and peace.

I’ve dreamed of you last night. Cannot remember when I did it the last time. It was so overwhelming to see you, to hear you, to feel you. It felt so naturally and good, like feeling the sunbeams on your cheeks after a long cold cloudy winter again. I can’t even remember what the dream was about. I just remember you, standing in front of me and the feeling of my heart, how it broke apart again like it did 850 days before. 850 days. It sounds like a lot of time. Sounds like a small infinity. Like i should have had enough time to overcome this. To begin a new chapter in the book of my life. And I thought I did, really. I thought that I’ve forgotten the sound of your voice, the details of your facial features, the feeling of being hugged by you, but I didn’t. God, I didn’t. I remember how I brushed away my tears and forced myself to fall asleep again, and I succeeded a few times, until I couldn’t do it anymore. Until it hurt so much that your sight made it even worse. And then I gave up. I gave up and returned to my small infinity. To the chapter in my life I reread over and over again.

Just try to keep them now, those little parts of her that will always belong to you. The sight of her eyes when she awakes in the morning, her warm body tightly wrapped in your arms. The feeling of kissing the soft corners of her mouth which were always your favorite part of her. Keep the nights when you laid in your bed, watching her falling asleep, her small hand on your chest right there where your heart rests and beats for her, like she wanted to make sure it’s still there. The moment when you loved each other for the first time and she gave up all of her fears, insecurities and doubts that ever existed just to make space for your unconditional love. Try to keep all the fights, tears and mad words, then those were the result of the passion and affection you had for each other. Just try to keep them now. To keep them forever. To keep it all.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.

And isn’t the whole point of things–beautiful things–that they connect you to some larger beauty? Those first images that crack your heart wide open and you spend the rest of your life chasing, or trying to recapture, in one way or another?

It was then that I realized very quickly that I’d choose that boy a thousand miles away over somebody right here. I am lonely, but I am only lonely for you.