So this is death. To wake up and realize the best part of you is missing, and never coming back. This is what it’s like to lose not only your love, but your best friend. This is what Lewis so eloquently described, the fear-like feeling of being robbed of everything you had, and everything you didn’t.

My life has been nothing but junk mail for the last two months, endless envelopes of useless trash filling my life. The rising stacks of empty day-to-day living are piling up all around me, each hour dropping another envelope on the already littered floor. You would think one as compulsive as I would sweep it into a pile and throw it away, or at least stack it neatly in a corner. But I don’t because among the credit card applications and insurance offers I imagine there’s a note from you, a promise that you’re coming back. The chaos keeps me safe from the truth.

Some days I’m able to live in anger and forced excitement as I relish in my voracious independence. I tell them I’m ready and pretend that filling my time with someone else is the much-needed anesthesia. It’s the lie I tell myself because I know that within hours you will drag me back to the pit of reality. Not you, but the haunting memory of you. You did it the other day in the car. Stuck in traffic I grabbed my notepad, reading my random scribbles, I turned a page and there you were: June 13 “I will always love you”. I wonder what the word ‘always’ even means. I think always ended on June 17th.

I pathetically carry my phone with me everywhere, hoping you'll call. You won't, and if you did you wouldn't be the you that left.