I have put you in a box in the back of my wardrobe.
You live there, safe and sound next to old hats and sweaters.
Sometimes I see your box and I run my hands across the bulging sides but never do I open in it for fear that you might escape. I tell myself that you are safer there, imprisoned inside that box. After all, if I don’t have to see you I don’t have to miss you, right?
I say these lies over and over again until I believe them because the truth is a pill too bitter for me to swallow, and I’ve swallowed a lot of pills in my life.
The truth is, not all of you fits in the box in my wardrobe. Hell, I don’t think you could fit in a thousand bulging boxes - you were always so big.
See, the rest of you resides in the back of my mind, taking up my every thought, everything thing reminds me of you and it’s getting to the point where I can see nothing else but your face.
Even though I tell myself I don’t miss you, we both know that is not true because I used to miss you when we were apart for mere moments so how could I possibly not miss you when it’s been days and weeks and months and years and it just doesn’t make any sense…
It doesn’t make any sense that I have to lock you away because we were supposed to be together forever.
Our future was matching houses right next door to each other, our children running back and forth, never asking if they could come in because the answer would always be yes. We would car pool to soccer games, school plays, dance class and graduations, not because we needed to, but because the thought of doing these things without the other made us sick to our stomachs. And when our kids were all gone we’d retire together- two old women in rocking chairs staring out at the shore, laughing and crying about all the life we had lived. This future wasn’t a dream, it was a distant reality – we were so sure of that. Do you remember when we were so sure?
I can’t seem to forget a single second of you, even the ones that burn holes in my chest and make me hate every ounce of myself.
I remember, so well, when I knew you like I knew the back of my hand – Actually, scratch that, I knew you better then I knew the back of my hand because when I was with you I never had the chance to look down.
Every line on your face, every crease in your fingers was more familiar to me than my own heartbeat, you knew me the exact same way.
I remember when, at the end of a long day, all I wanted to do was retire next to you because that’s where I was safest, the world couldn’t touch me, I was home.
You were my home.
You still are.
I think that’s why, as hard as I try I can never feel comfortable. I can never rest. Because I haven’t felt home since that day four years ago when we walked away.
You cannot be my home anymore.
See, just recently I have found a new home. It is a place that grants me invincibility- I dive off of cliffs into shallow water and jump out of airplanes without parachutes yet I’m just fine. The only catch is that I cannot take you with me.
So, I’ve set fire to the box in the back of my wardrobe, and as it is burning I am finally learning how to live without you.
But do not fear, even when the box is nothing but ashes that are scattered at opposite ends of the earth I will still remember the days in which I believed that the entire world was made up of just you and I.
And when I am an old woman in a rocking chair staring out at the shore, I will certainly be thinking about you.