It's been a long night and a long day and a long week and a long month. It's been a long year. The most painful and most magical of my life so far. Most of the time I've been angry or indignant, as is well deserved for the way you treated me. But today, I miss you. I miss your scent and the shape of your body and the warm brown gaze of your eyes in mine. I'm thinking of when we first met. How you taught me that sometimes no matter how much you love and want someone, you can still hold back and wait for them to be ready to accept it. How you taught me that it was possible to give and receive love, to vulnerably offer myself to someone and not be pushed away or used or rejected or hurt. How you made me feel worth something. I thought losing you would negate all the good things.  I thought losing you would tear away my sense of worth. And it's true it has been difficult. It's been the most difficult thing I have ever had to experience. It has challenged my sense of self-worth, and made the good things painful to recall. But you can't undo four years in a month; you can't undo the pain caused, and likewise I can't undo the gifts you gave me.

I've lain in bed all day, slain by sleep. Exhausted and happy and sad. Yesterday drained me. It was the best and worst day. Walking the same halls I used to walk with you, with only your ghost, a broken heart and an empty hand. Meeting my “favorite” musician without my real favorite musician, you, by my side. You should have been there. But you weren't. Thoughts of you were the only thing keeping me awake as I drove home at 4am. Funny how the same force that made me want to take my own life one short month ago was saving me by keeping the car from going off the road. And when I finally fell into bed your face invaded every dream.

I spent all morning unready to wake up. I passed the day tossing and turning, wrestling against memories of you where I used to wrestle for sleep, pressed against your body. And when I finally couldn't sleep anymore, I lay on my pile of unfolded laundry in the living room, fighting the desperate need for a change of pace, a breath of fresh air. But I couldn't avoid looking out the window and seeing pink streaked across the darkening sky, color stains shaped like the old scars I carved into my wrists long before I met you. It is the last night of September. I followed the clouds out the door and into my car.

Before I knew it I was back in the park where it all ended. Walking with the soles of my feet bared, the very path I walked with my soul and heart bared one month ago, stopping behind the bush where you refused to meet my gaze, tearing out grass as I bled saltwater from my body, begging you for answers. I sat where you sat then. I tried to feel what you might have felt. I watched the sun set in the sky, a beautiful and colorful ending to the most painful month of my life, and I thought of the sun setting, beautiful and colorful, on the pain we caused each other.

Now I'm the one tearing the grass from the ground, my heart straining against meeting your memories. My eyes are dry, my lips mumble the lyrics to a La Dispute song as it resonates through the empty field out of the speakers in my phone, and I whisper but I want to scream.

I want to be tugging your hair in passion, not the grass in pain. I want to be whispering in your ear, not the empty air; I want to know if you've been here since that day. My heart says no. I want to know if you've missed me for one second or if you have sunk fully beneath the ripples of lies and fake friendships, never to return. And every day until now I've hoped you'll never return. But now I do. I do, I do, I do. I want you to return. Not to me but to a place of peace and hope. I see the darkness in your eyes. You can't hide from me. No Instagram filter covers the pain and sadness I see etched in the lines of your face. They are a truth not even you could conceal from me. Your pain is far more familiar to me even than my own.

I'm covered in bug bites. The sky is completely black. Normally I'd be terrified and frustrated and running back to my car. But I sit. I sit. I talk to you like you're dead. Because the you I knew is never coming back. And I can almost taste you, I can almost feel you, I can almost reach you. But you're a little too distant. A little beyond my grasp. I'm not your savior anymore. And you're not my hero.

I walk with bare feet on the wet grass, slowly back to my car. The story isn't over. But this chapter is.