This Is Moving On

It’s not a one-step solution, it’s forgetting and investing time in other people, it’s realising that you didn’t think about them yesterday and you were happy. It’s like they’re flitting around your head in circles and you becoming immune to it, but every now and then they’ll hit the sides of your skull. That’s when you’re forced to think of them. That’s when you leave reality and you’re propelled back into the past. But you won’t think of scenes and situations. You’ll think of how their skin looked in the dim light and how their profile looked before glancing at you. Their smile will fill your vision and stay there for the rest of the day. You live your day through their joy in that moment. The moment when you made them happy. This will happen a lot; them flitting back and forth through your thoughts. Kicking them out is impossible and cruel and you can’t bring yourself to it. So you write. Pages and pages of them. You keep them with you through your ink and as it flows it’s almost like they’re back beside you but then you’ll finish and finally they’re gone from your head for a bit. And you can’t decide which is worse, remembering or forgetting.

Someone else comes along and you lose yourself in the development but it’s not enough. They make you happy and fill up your time. This new person will be good for you in all the ways that they were not. Though you long for them to be more, this person is only new, too new to replace them and it’s difficult. You’re still writing and you’ll feel guilty because you’re not writing about the new person enough. You’ll feel insane because you know, you know that you’re not letting the past go but you can’t help it if they’re still flitting through your mind, causing this damage. You learn to deal with their interruptions throughout the day. You’ll say something and realise that it was their catch phrase. You’ll be waiting in line and the person two people in front of you will make you jolt because for a second you were tricked into thinking it was them. You’ll get used to this. You won’t stop jolting or second glancing, but your recovery time gets quicker with each deception. Moving on isn’t easy and you’ll internally fight it the entire way.

You’ll go through phases of purposely thinking about them because they made you immortal. You’ll go through phases of actively trying to forget them and exhaling sharply when it’s 2:16am and you’re still awake, still actively trying to forget them. Then you’ll go back to the first phase and keep them alive and thriving in your mind. If you can’t have them beside you, you can let their ghost live in you. And then you’ll realise that you can’t remember the exact colour of their eyes. You’ll flick through the mental snapshots that you took ironically because you thought that you’d never be in this position. You’ll wonder why the pop music playing in the background is playing when your eyes are watering and you miss a breath. Then on a Thursday afternoon you’ll be sitting and squinting your eyes from the sun peeking through the blinds and you’ll realise that you didn’t think about them that Wednesday. This is when you can’t decide if you’re exhilarated or disappointed. They’re slipping away from you, but that Wednesday was happy and there were no interruptions. You didn’t look for them at every corner and you didn’t feel your body deflate with the memories of them. You realise you are moving on and you can’t decide, you don’t know if you’ll ever decide if you’re okay with it.