The Day After You Left

The apartment feels foreign almost as if I never lived here. The walls look unfamiliar without you in them. Without your belongings scattering the apartment. I can’t help but think that you packed warmth in the boxes of your belongings and took it with you.

I have never felt so lost. It’s hard to believe that there was ever a time before you. I can’t remember who I was then because I remember loving who I was with you more than anything else that came along with being loved by you. I had never been so sure of myself and my decisions.

Today, I woke up thinking that the sun wouldn’t come out. I woke up with the intentions of curling up and facing the fact that you are no longer mine. You are a memory I hope to never forget. A ghost dancing around the space where we ate dinner and watched movies, smiling and laughing.

I sit here reminding myself that the version of you laughing in the apartment is the past and this, right here, is now my present and I’ll have to learn to live in your absence.

The girl I see in the morning today is lost and broken and doesn’t remember how to smile or enjoy anything because sadness has overtaken every bone in her body.

Who I am today is a girl who has to plan a new future for herself not involving you.

I can still smell your cologne around the apartment and a part of me hopes that it’ll never leave to keep the thought of you and I alive. A part of me never wants to let you go although I know I will have to eventually.

You were deserving of my love and so I gave it all to you thinking that this exact moment would never come. I wish I didn’t know what this apartment looked like empty. I wish I could have heard your laugh more and your stories. I wish I could have seen your smile more and the beautiful look in your sleepy eyes when you woke up and I wish that I was given more time with you. I know that I would have appreciated it.

Today, I sit here daydreaming of you rushing through the door to admit that you’ve made a mistake, but even the little bit of hope I have left isn’t enough to convince me that you would ever. This feels permanent and I think that’s what makes me most sad. The fact that this feels irreversible. The fact that you leaving has spoiled every happy memory.

I love you. I don’t know when I’ll stop or if I’ll ever. I just know that the only thing to do now is to remind myself every day that happiness takes many forms and not to let the fact that you have pieces of me packed away in your boxes.