1 Amnesia

I can't seem to create an accurate picture of you in my mind anymore. This fact has been tormenting me since I realized it. As I beat myself up trying to visualize your face, an all encompassing numbness swallows me. I try and try but I can't manage to conjure up what you look like. I doubt I'll ever be able to again. It's like I've hit my head and caused my memories to get jumbled up and a few to fall out. I've never been a particularly imaginative person, but your face was burned into my mind for a while.

I remember your round eyes, as blue as the ocean, and how they would darken like there was an incoming storm during certain activities. The memory of your soft skin is etched into my fingertips. Even the shape of your mouth is engraved into mine. Still, these images cannot come together to form one. It's devastating in the most torturous way possible.

Even worse than that, by the time I return to you, if I return to you, you will have forgotten my face like I have yours. This volatile realization hit me like a truck, knocking me back into a reality I didn't want to face. It bit me right in the ass a little ironically, because this is my fault. Not wanting to face these thoughts, I willed them to leave me alone. Regardless of how hard I tried to stop it, my brain kept going.

When you lay your eyes on me again, if you lay your eyes on me again, the memories that have rotted away in both of our minds will come flooding back and you'll feel the pain for the first time in a long time. You'll resent me even after all those years and turn me away. I'll drive back to my shitty motel with tears in my empty eyes and almost swerve into a ditch because of how hard I'm crying. I'll know that I dug this hole myself and if I hadn't left you in the dark that day, I would still have you in my life. The worst part is, if I were you, I would send me packing just as fast.

I should have just called and told you. Letting you know that I couldn't handle the distance would have been eons better than letting you think I didn't love you anymore. The day I stop loving you will be the day Hell freezes over. I was so much of a coward that I probably jeopardized our chances of ever having a functioning relationship again.

My mind must have made the decision to stop texting you back without considering my, or, more importantly, your feelings. The human brain is aware that it is going to do something ten seconds before the mind consciously realizes it. Knowing that makes me want to stab through my skull and into my frontal lobe to stop my brain from making anymore life-altering decisions without consulting me first.

There has not been even a millisecond that I've not thought about you since that day. When my dog died, you were on my mind. I couldn't stop thinking about how upset you'd be for me if things hadn't changed. As soon as school started up again, you were all I could think about: not homework, not exams, just you. At the funeral of a boy who shot himself with his mother's gun, you were there in my head, right next to the sickeningly graphic images of brain matter and blood covering the corpse of my classmate. As I sat in the pews and listened to the Priest spew something about how God is good, I couldn't help but wish I was in his place. I deserved to be the one in that casket, because dying is the only possible experience that could be worse than what I must have put you through.

Still, uncontrollable pain follows me everywhere I go. My chest hurts more and more everyday; even after 5 months, the pain continues to grow. Regardless, the torment I've put myself through cannot begin to compare to the hell I've haphazardly sent you to. The regret has never gone away. I feel it every single day on this godforsaken planet. I feel it as soon as I wake up. I feel it when I get ready for the day and I feel it as I lie down in bed after class. I feel it when I pop an unreasonable amount of whatever pills I can find in an attempt to not feel it anymore. The pain haunts me like a vengeful spirit and I let it because without it I have nothing left of you. I would rather bathe in a tub of acid than forget about you. If I let myself forget, you cease to exist. I had a hard enough time accepting the fact that you weren't a figment of my imagination when I still had you, and as my brain slowly loses the ability to create a picture of you, I can feel that fear coming back tenfold.

Is it unreasonable to think of you as a ghost? That's how you've felt to me for the longest time now: a ghost that I killed. I'm sorry for murdering our love. I wonder what I am without you. Surely, I'm not an individual anymore. You occupy my every thought and my world revolves around the idea of you like the earth revolves around the sun. I'm one half of a two piece puzzle that I myself have lost the other half to. I know how to get to the missing puzzle piece, but I've bent it up so badly that if I tried to put it back now, it wouldn't fit.

After you left Chicago, I just couldn't deal with the separation. Being without you was like being thrown into the freezing cold after sunbathing on a nice summer's day. Life was different in the worst way possible, especially without a phone. I couldn't afford one at the time, and texting you for five minutes on a friend's phone every couple days was torment. It wasn't enough for me, and I should've rationalized that leaving us with nothing would be the hardest thing I would ever have to go through.

I wouldn't blame you one bit for shutting your door in my face and locking me out if I ever tried to find you. I have no room to, when I basically did the same thing. If I ever decided to text or call you, I wouldn't be surprised if you told me to fuck off or if you just straight up ignored me. I think I deserve to be ignored. The former gives me closure and the latter leaves me how I left you: clueless.

Only a few very, very close friends approved of our relationship. I never told you that. I know that us being together made my parents resent me a bit. They didn't like that you were older than me. They, themselves, are the same age. They found it weird and predator-like that we were together. They said there was a power imbalance because of our ages, like five years was enough to create that. They fed me the craziest shit once you went back home.

Our relationship was toxic: that's what my family used to say. Maybe they're right, but I'll never be able to bring myself to give a shit. Over holiday, my parents attempted to brainwash me into thinking you were using me and didn't love me. I almost let them once, while I was in a very vulnerable state of mind. They always found out things that they didn't need too, always knew too much. They still know more than they need to. They always will.

Regardless of what they say, I know you loved me. I know you probably still do, because I know you. I know everything about you as you do me. We're the same person; you're still me and I'm still you. We said if one of us left, we'd kill ourselves. I've tried to end the pain, but I wonder if you have too. When I return, will it be to you or to your grave? That thought plagues my mind. I haven't had contact with you in so long that if you died, I wouldn't know.

Every thought of you is drenched in pain and regret. I can't shake the feeling that you feel the same way. It's worse to think that I've affected your daily life so drastically in a bad way. All I want is to be the reason that you're happy every day again. I have no room to complain so much about the pain, because it's all my fault. Every queasy dead- eyed day and every almost-overdose is all my fault, isn't it? The pain you're going through? My fault. The absence of even a couple minutes of time together? My fault. The void that our parting has left in both of us? It's fucking all my fault. It's my fault that there's nothing I could ever do to bring us back together.

So, instead of uselessly attempting to find you again, I go about my day in a haze. I wake up at whatever time my brain decides to torment me a bit extra with flashbacks in my dreams. I wait for my alarm to go off and I get dressed in what I probably got dressed in the day before. I drag my sorry ass out the door and into my car. Once I'm at work, a busy Starbucks in the middle of the city, I put on my apron that's just as dirty as the rest of my clothes and clock in. The customers spill in at about seven thirty and everything is business as usual from there: taking orders and washing dishes. I clock out after eight hours of boredom and drag myself back into my car and eventually my house. I get home and take a handful of something to get me high, maybe chug some liquor or roll up a joint. It'll never be enough though, will it? You're the only thing that will ever be enough for me.

Y'know, I didn't even smoke when we were together. I quit because you told me it was bad for me; I didn't care about my health, but you did and that was enough for me. The second we parted I dove headfirst into every drug I could get my hands on. I'm an obsessive person and I need an obsession to thrive in life. Without you, all I had left was drugs, alcohol, and whatever else would inebriate me. I didn't, don't, care what it is; I just need something to make me forget about how fucking good you made me feel, because I'll never feel that way again.

Maybe one day I'll damage my brain enough to forget about you completely. I'll never be able to live happily knowing that no happiness will ever live up to the happiness you made me feel. It's exhausting living with that feeling. I'm sure it's more exhausting living with the fact that a lover left you without a word. For that, I am so sorry. I can say that as much as I want, but it won't come close to the apology I owe you. I owe you an apology that goes further than words, gestures, or gifts; I owe your soul an apology for taking away it's second half.

All of this could mean nothing to you. I could just be fucking monologueing in my head for no reason because we're never going to meet again. I need to accept that. I need to accept that there's a possibility that you give zero shits about me. I wonder everyday if you actually do, if my concerns for your feelings, for your life, are even plausible. Do you not care that I left? Or does it haunt you every day like it does me? Do you still love me? Or do you hate my guts as much as I do? If I messaged you this, would it even be worth it? Or would you text back "lol I don't care"? These questions terrorize me almost as much as my guilt.

It's likely that you've moved on to some extent. I don't think it's unreasonable to say you've found someone else. Or maybe, I've completely shattered your trust for anyone. It's impossible to know.