I Have Spent All Of 2015 Lying About Loving You

I have been lying every day for the last year without even realizing it.

It started when I began to tell myself I was okay. Your absence sent me into a comatose of numbness, making me cold to all situations that required affection of any sorts. This went on for nearly three months.

I removed myself from all social media. I became attached to the thought “out of sight, out of mind” and took it literally. I did not think you walked this Earth or breathed this air if I wasn’t reading tweets or seeing Instagram pictures to tell me otherwise.

I did not watch any type of movie that would cause me to shed a single tear. I also didn’t listen to any music that had a beat relatively slow enough to stir up remnants of the high-school, angst-filled me I used to be.

I did not go to any restaurants that we had been to in the last year. I also did not travel to certain cities, or drive specific roads, because I no longer found it “necessary.”

I thought these actions made me strong. I thought that the colder I became, the easier it would be. But the pressure continued to build, and once it burst, all of my walls combusted, making me face the truth.

I did not stop loving you last Christmas when I saw you loving someone else. I did not stop loving you even when I was dating someone else. And as I write this now, I know I never stopped loving you, even though I have sworn up and down I’m over it.

I can survive without you, I’ve proven that for the last 365+ days. I can also stand in a room with you and your significant other and remember how to breathe. I can do all these things, but it does not mean that I do not love you.

I loved you when you were mine and I have loved you while you have loved another.

You abandoned me, and I lied to myself for the last year that it didn’t hurt. But it did. And I carry that burden, that void, that year and a half, on my back, everywhere I go. I introduce it to the new love interests that come my way, and I unconsciously sabotage something good with the fear that they will leave me the same way you did.

I realize I fall short time and time again because I look for a love in someone else that I once found in you. I want them to talk to me the way you did, touch me the way you did, and adore me like you did. And when they don’t, I think of you and wonder if I will ever come across another human being who will surpass the love I felt for you.

Writing this now, I feel weak. I feel that I have failed for the last year because in ways, I am not even close to being okay. I have talked myself into the thought of no longer caring, creating the perfect monologue that I share with friends and family when they check in on me.

“You’re so much better off without him. You know that, right?”

And who would I be to disagree, causing a whirlwind of questions that I am not prepared to answer. So instead, I nod, go on and on about how I would have been settling, and change the topic.

No, the hurt is no longer unbearable. But if you stood right before me, I don’t think I could turn the other way. I don’t want to be with you, no. But I do miss the love we had for one another.

I must remember that we can fall in love many times, but never the same way twice. And I pray that I find one that will surpass the one we shared.