5 Stages Of Losing You

1.

Losing you felt like a car accident that had been waiting to happen to me my whole life and I had constantly swerved to avoid it. It felt like the wind screen shattering in my face, the car overturning on a bridge as I felt my entire body shake, trying to resist the worst of the damage, but managing to avoid nothing at all. I think it was shock that stopped me from feeling the pain at first. Because there was no way this could be happening. There was no way you could be gone. There was no way I was having to face a reality without you because there IS no such thing as reality if it didn’t have you in it.

2.

It came to me in the middle of the night. I was lying in bed, numb, completely broken when it hit me so hard that I almost threw up. Anger. White hot, and cruel, coursing through my veins. What had given you the right to leave me? Who did you think you were, leaving me alone to deal with all this pain? And why, why was I the one left behind? No one ever talks about the kind of anger where you feel angry at everyone and everything simply for being completely helpless in the face of tragedy. No one talks about how pain buries itself inside your heart like a bullet that becomes infected with this dark thing that penetrates your very soul.

3.

I’ve been praying recently. More than I have in years. I’ve been praying for you to come back. If not that, then I pray for a time machine. If not that then I pray for death to take me too. If not that then I pray for something, anything to dull my senses so I don’t feel so much, so terribly terribly much the intense loss of your presence in every way around me. I pray for a way to forget your smile, and your laugh and your scent that is slowly fading from your clothes and no matter what I do to keep it, there is nothing that can stop it slowly leaving, the way you left me.

4.

The world should have ended with you.

5.

I finally walked to the place where I last kissed you goodbye. I finally stood at the spot where you walked away forever. I remember you turning to shout how much you loved me and how you couldn’t wait to see me at the end of the day. I remember that being the very last moment I was ever happy. And as I stand here, for a moment, just a second, I see you walking away again. Closing my eyes, I try and remember what it felt like to be that happy again. For the briefest millisecond, that little frisson of happiness returns to me.

For the first time in forever, I smile and dare to hope.