How To Miss Someone

Wake up with a headache from last nights one too many wine glasses. Remember flashes of the night, of the crying, of the release. Notice that you don’t feel relieved.

Take out the trash and the recycling bin that is piled up with bottles, and hope that the sunshine turns this day around. Turns this life around. Notice that it doesn’t.

Try to work, to concentrate on anything but this pain. Try to write. To do anything but feel like this. Hope that work takes your mind off of him or off of her. Notice that it doesn’t.

Text your best friend. Tell her everything or nothing at all. Try to ask her questions about her life and her boyfriend and pretend to listen. Pretend that you’re fine. Notice that you are not fine.

Pick up the photograph of you and him or you and her and brace yourself for the hurricane that will pound on your heart. Knock. Knock. Knock. There it goes again, turning your heart into dust.

Look at yourself in the mirror. Know that this isn’t what you want. This is isn’t how you want to fell. You would do anything to make it stop. To make the loneliness stop seeping into your cells. To make the hurt stop aching. To make the tears stop falling.

Notice that you don’t look like yourself. And notice that you aren’t.

You’re just a shell now. A shell of the you who used to love so hard. A shell of you that used to smile at the world and at the universe. A shell of you, that used to be happy.

You didn’t want their leaving to turn your world grey. You didn’t want their goodbye to turn you into wreckage. But that’s the thing — you didn’t even prepare for them to go.

Take an ice cold shower and remember what it feels like to be alive. Even if it’s painful. Wake up from your numbness. From your nothingness.

Open up the blinds on your window and try to focus on the warmth of the sun that hits your face. Feel all of that ugly and all of that darkness and feel like you are about to die. Notice that you aren’t dead.

Keep waking up. Breathing. Living. Talking. Eating. Drinking. Sleeping.

Just keep doing it, until you don’t have to use alcohol or drugs or other bodies as your protection. Keep doing it until you become your own savior and your own best friend.

Just keep going.

Don’t let your loneliness ruin you. Don’t let someone who left you, have all the power. And don’t let this feeling take control on you. It’s just a feeling. Just a moment. Just a second. You have the whole rest of your life ahead of you.