Just a letter

After the story was over, I was sure to mention my love for you. As if that would change her mind. Her advice came in the form of three words: I wouldn't hope... Two years later and those words still crush me like the first time. At night when the noise and people fade, you remain. And I sit and wonder if I love you or the way you loved me. 

These past few weeks for some reason, visions of you have begun to resurface. In the shower I wrote your name three times on the fogged up glass door and imagined it a love spell. It wasn't, because love can't be wished for or conjured up. Still, I stare outside most days and will you to come. And you do, you pass by, a stranger. 

My magic and hope won't bring you back, so when will I move on? How can I search for a feeling only you have evoked in me? What if I don't find it? I have deduced that these questions mark the reasons why I want you back- so I don't have to learn the answers.

We are strangers. It is a fact and a necessary one at that. This is my strategy: out of sight out of mind.

No strategy is full-proof, and although sometimes you do creep in, I feel better. My life is a wreck, a tornado of drug-addiction and looming mental illness. But I also have red hair now and I have good conversations with good people. I am finally taking math, like we talked about. To have survived you and all the pain you brought me, I am doing well. The sad truth is when I have you I do not have myself. 

I am proud of how far I've come since you left, I took back most of what was mine and I don't ever want to sacrifice it again. Even if I don't survive this life, at least I would have lost it being my own I am. That girl you swore was perfect, soon became real in your eyes and you can't unsee her. And I don't blame you, because it is all too true that I deserve to be seen and loved for the beautiful beast I am.

This isn't a love letter, I don't write those anymore. People would always tell me that heartbreak grows a person cold, it wasn't until us that the cold finally came. Occasionally I'll gaze into a football player's eyes and a glimpse of the girl you met will put her hand to their cheek and feel like it's all possible again. Not even a minute later, she is gone. Isolation is deafening but it is safe. 

There is no point to this, to any of it, really. The world has kept turning all this time, together we exist only in my mind. And one day, you will only be a thought, and then nothing. Until that day to truly let you go, to say no, to love myself instead. 

You cannot return, no matter how much I beg you to. So please don't, because I have to do this without you.