([A/N]: I posted this as a goodbye to someone back in May, but I took it down. Since I doubt I’ve as much as crossed her mind in months, I figured I would post it as a final goodbye to her and that part of my life. It’s not my best work, and generally my feelings on the matter have changed a lot over time, but I feel better putting it out there instead of letting someone who treated me that way have any more power over me.)
I spent hours out late at night last summer, just looking at the stars and trying to figure out if I could tell you that I loved you. I cared about you, I wanted you to be happy, I wanted to be sure. I knew that I could never be as bad as the hurt you’d felt in the past— I could never, would never hit you. I knew I could be good for you in a way. But I already loved you so much that I hated the idea of you ever feeling hurt at all in any way. I don’t remember when I knew that I loved you, I just remember the moment I couldn’t not tell you.
And I never got tired of hearing you say it. Somedays we might’ve said it a dozen times but it never stopped making me happy. I don’t know if there’s anything I miss more about those months than going to bed every night with a goodnight text from you telling me that you loved me.
My bed (our bed) doesn’t smell like you anymore. Sometimes I still wake up and reach for you. Sometimes I still smell you. I’ve been having trouble sleeping.
I miss the sound of your voice. I miss your singing. I miss your smile. I miss your giggles. I miss you.
I found some of your candy under my bed (our bed) the other day. It was one of the watermelon rock candies we got down at the gas station on days where we spent the whole day in my bed. I think it was the only kind of green candy that you liked. It was unopened.
I threw it out.
It’s funny the kind of things that are ruined in your wake. One of them is candy. Sometimes that’s kind of funny to me. Sometimes I cry.
Remember how I used to kiss you just to taste the sugar on your tongue? Remember how I used to kiss you awake? Remember how I used to kiss your neck to get your attention? Remember how I could never just let you go with just a peck on the lips? Remember the sensitive spot you found on my jaw that you loved to kiss? Remember our first kiss, when we talked about it afterward till midnight? Remember the time I drove to your house after midnight just so I could hold you in the dark of your driveway for a couple minutes after you got back from a competition? Do you remember?
Last night, I went outside near midnight just to stand in the rain. Cold rain on a warm night. I felt powerful, eternal. But when I went back inside, I was just cold and alone again. Is that going to be the rest of my life? Brief touches of infinity followed by a shove back into this hole of mine?
Some people I talked to said that how much I loved you and cared for you was incredible. They told me they wished someone loved them that way. Others told me that you made a mistake, that you’ll regret it. I saved those texts, but against the dozens I saved from you, it feels small.
Against all of your empty promises and empty words, those words feel empty too. I feel empty, too. Maybe words are just empty. But the only thing left that is mine “always” is my own words. So I will keep writing.
One of the scarring, gaping pits you left is in “home”. If home is the place where you feel safe, the only place I have ever felt “home” is with you. My house is wrought with tripwires and biting words. Even hiding alone in my room, anxiety hollows me out with a cold hunger. With your touch, I was anchored in a harbor none of that could touch me within. Without you or your touch, I am adrift once again. I’m terrified I will never find another shore again.
There are things you cannot know about being in love until you enter it. I discovered one of my favorite things about it within you. You were, are, imperfect. I am too. I’d spent my whole life locked in my own human experience, facing my own demons, with little to hold onto. And then you came, and you were imperfect, but you were human and genuine and vulnerable to me. You were real in a way I had never seen before and it made you beautiful. You were flawed but human and I never stopped seeing you as everything to me. I love (loved) everything about you.
Some people I talked to said “you’ll just not be as quick to trust” or “you won’t fall in love as easy”. Others said “you’ll just be different next time” or “you’ll not let someone into that same place again”. That terrifies me.
The love that I felt for you is the greatest thing that I’ve ever experienced, the greatest thing that I’ve ever accomplished. If it is (was) such a great thing, then I don’t want to lose it. You shattered me but I can’t not put the pieces back together. I can’t not rip the bitterness from the burnt out husk that you left me in.
I’ll drop to my knees to beg and pray to whatever God or god or thing that can fix me there is and scream for it to make me whole again. Take away my happiness, cut and bruise me, render me ugly and fat, but God please, let me burn that way again. Let me love with everything I have again. Let me find a home. Let me soft and warm and trusting. Let me kiss and cuddle and hold and make love again. Let me feel alive. Let me be loved. Let me be loving. I will not let you take it from me. I will rip it back from the jaws of the world as many times as I have to. This is a cold and empty place but I will find a home to burn within.
Sidorenko's Writing 
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