It’s so difficult to stay away from you when you’re just around the corner. I run, drive, or bike past your house nearly every day. I know when you are home without even making the effort to find out, and I hate that. I already miss you so desperately that the temptation to simply walk up and knock on your door is something that I fight constantly.

Maybe I could put you out of my head more easily if you were already gone. Somewhere I don’t know, can’t picture, moving on with your life in a way that is foreign to me. If I didn’t have to dread running into you accidentally at practically any moment, putting on a brave face and pretending that seeing you doesn’t break my heart. I don’t know whether I want to hold you or punch you right now, and I shouldn’t do either, so I set my jaw stubbornly and stay away.

It’s ridiculously difficult to stay out of my head, to dismiss memories of our happy past when everywhere I go has some vestige of you attached. Maybe I need to leave too, get out of this small town that I’ve only ever really known as part of the pair that once included you. Maybe I need to reimagine it for myself, on my own, but that feels almost impossible at the moment. This is the first heartbreak I’ve experienced without the support of a network of friends to lift me up. Sometimes it’s as if I’m sinking into a chasm of loneliness that I’ve dug on my own, like all I’ve done in my life is fall into one misstep after another.

The problem is that I can’t run away from myself, no matter how hard I try. I’ve been in this headspace before and pushing it aside didn’t fix anything. I’ve worked on healing myself from the inside out before, but I didn’t dig deep enough. I’m beginning to understand that my pain is something that will never go away on its own, or find a cure in the love of another. It has to be dealt with every single day in real time, with care and tenderness towards all the wounded parts of me. It is the reason that I keep choosing partners who cannot give me the love that I crave. To be fair, no one can because I have to fill that void for myself, somehow, some way.

Some stupid part of me, deep inside, hopes you come back even though I know you won’t. I am well aware that our relationship had issues brought on by the baggage that both of us have not addressed. I don’t know that you will ever care enough to face and transform yours, and that’s not my problem any longer. As much as I wish you would, it doesn’t matter. You’re not mine anymore and I don’t know if I would even pick you again if I was a healthy, emotionally whole individual.

All that I want from the universe right now is to laugh in your arms again, but I understand that’s the one thing that’ll keep ruining me, so I fight my own deeply ingrained, dysfunctional instincts and I stay away. And yet, still, in spite of myself, I wish that you would come get me and make it all okay.