Everything here is a reminder and I can’t get away. Your art is on my walls. The necklace you gifted stares at me from where it dangles. Your mug is in the cupboard. Your toothbrush lays exactly where you left it. Your flannel, the odds and ends, the mix cd of music which I cannot bring myself to listen to… all needle pricks to the still bleeding bits of me which mourn your absence.

I changed the bed linen, tears trickling slow, my soul weighted with the memories of the last time we slept together. But I cannot erase you just by switching out old sheets for new. You still take up residency in my fractured heart and I just do not have the strength to boot you out.

I wish So Hard that it didn’t have to be this way. But I am the 24/7 train, going and going and going. Making stops here and there, picking up, dropping off, brief moments of respite for maintenance and diagnostic checks.

And you… were a passenger. Who rightfully grew tired of the long never-ending hours.

I lean on my friends who hold me steady. Reminding me of all the work I’ve done on myself, the progress I’ve made. Refreshing my memory in the knowledge that I am not responsible for someone else’s journey, only my own.

I sit in the silence and the image of your smiling eyes pops into my head and pierces me… it’s okay. I’m used to it. I cry off and on in between moments of keeping busy so that I don’t think of you. Still. You manage to appear. Sometimes, I let myself be slightly angry. You said you loved me. You said you didn’t want to change anything about me.

But after a while, it was those things which you supposedly did not want to change that drove you crazy.

The outrage is minimal and short-lived because I know that in your heart of hearts, you are just a wounded man who needed more than I could offer. A man who hasn’t recognized his true worth and value as of yet. And I’m not the one who can give it to you. You equate someone’s need for you as love. Your usefulness as worth. Your people-pleasing as value. But you are so much more and God, how I wish you could see and accept that. That I loved and still love the man you managed to become despite the fact that Life tried to tear you apart from the get go. You are so many things… and maybe one day I’ll have the chance to be with you again to celebrate them all. But if I’m not the one, I truly hope that someone else can and will be. That thought is it’s own special kind of heart-breaking.

I miss you. Terribly. Though I will not say so to you. That would be cruel. So I will cradle this pain and hold it tight to my chest. I will keep myself busy. I will cry in between making the kids lunch and washing dishes. Because … I am capable. It’s what I do. You loved and loathed that, though. Didn’t you.