Life is full of letting go. But I still feel empty at your absence.

There is a hole where you used to be. I have tried filling it, but all things I put there fall through.

My heart is crying out in indignation, this isn’t right, and I repeat to it over and over, in attempt to soothe her aching, but it is. It is. It is. She doesn’t listen. She is in revolt.

What kind of love replaces that of a friend? None. No kind. Because you can’t kiss away the tragedy of losing a fifteen-year long friendship. You can’t fill the place another person filled so thoroughly. I have learnt that you shouldn’t try to. One of the hardest things I have learnt to accept, is the art of letting go. And so much of life is stained by it, having to say goodbye. I know it is only normal. I know forever hardly exists for any of us. But still, it hurts.

I feel it every day, your absence. The silence speaks too loudly. I can hear my bones creaking like floorboards of an old house. I hear my heartbeat and its singularity. I watch the sun fade behind the horizon, and wonder where you are. How you are.

Once we knew each other so well, I didn’t have to wonder. And I think I knew just how we had drifted when I realised one day, that I no longer knew you. Not in the ways that mattered between close friends.

It feels like an eternity since we laughed together. It feels like a lifetime ago that you loved me with the ferocity of blind loyalty that comes with youth. I know you no more than I do anybody else now. And that, I have decided, is a great tragedy. Perhaps inevitable. But a tragedy none the less.

But I supposed I am partly lying. Because I do know you, at least fifteen years of you. I carry with me, parts of your life that were never mine. I hold memories in my head that I’ve never lived through. I know past details, and the inside out of your childhood home. I have a map in my head of your old life. I know your daily routine from when we were twelve. I know the walk you took to school at fifteen. I feel in me the echo of your ache at seventeen. I feel the buzz of anticipation and fear from eighteen. And I have with me this last piece of your life; the chaotic joy of growing up. Of moving forward, moving on. I recall the joy of your uni acceptance. I know how messy your dorm room was when you first moved in. You cried to me on the phone your first day of uni. When you rang the landline before I left home, and my mum answered. And how I felt your comfort with my family, with me, through your open display of misery. That you called my house, called me, because it felt like home. I know so much about you. I have shared both melancholy and maddening joy. These are things I will never forget. These are things I will hold with me forever. These are things that echo in that empty space.

I no longer know you. But I once did. That has to be enough.

So, where my heart is thrashing against our distance, where my hands ache to hold on, where my memories create a tidal wave to drown me under, to again wait for you to fill that empty spot inside myself; I am turning away. And trying desperately not to look back. Because I know I will not be greeted with your dark brown eyes, or your deeply familiar smile. I know I will be met with the sight of the back of your head and a taste of bitterness. So much of our friendship was never bitter. I don't want it to be the last thing I felt for you.

So, as we both retreat, I have questions unanswered. As the stretch of time drags on and on, and life continues, I am beginning to forget the pain of our youth. I have memories, but they sit silent and buried. They are being pushed back by time. I am forgetting what your face looks like after so long. But still, I remember what you feel like. I remember what it is to be loved by someone with a strangely reserved heart, and yet a bondage like shared blood. Even where memories begin to vanish, the entirety of you never will.

Of all the ways you can know someone, having them in your life for such a long time, in the absence of reason, has to be the most intimate. I don’t care what they say; friendships hurt more than anything. Because they mean more than anything.

You meant more to me than anything. That is why I am shattering. That is why the emptiness has become a thing that cannot be filled. Why I have given up on trying. I have loved you always, and I will love you always. Until my dying breath, and then beyond that. It is a given. You were a part of me, and now your absence is a part of me. It too, is something I will learn to cherish. It too is something I will leave to rest, to cool, to become still once my heart stops thrashing.

My dear old friend, my heart is a holding place, a home. Wherever you roam, this little forgotten piece of you that you left carelessly with me, will always remain. Sitting like a gravestone, in that empty space inside myself.

Loving you changed me. Mourning you, will also change me.

But I don't believe change to be a terrible thing. And I hope with my whole heart that you get the change you have been chasing for so long. And if you ever look back and find that I am not there, just know it was a pleasure loving you, and being loved by you.

I hold a piece of you with me, in that empty space that can never be filled. I don't want it to be. It was always yours, and it forever will be.