At some point or another

At some point, I guess everything changed between us. With infinite knowledge one would be able to determine exactly where our friendship switched onto separate lanes. It could be when we last saw each other, outside your house in the rain, or it could be when you told me you got into that university an entire world away. Was it before that? Was it when you called me a few months ago, and I didn’t answer?

I know it doesn’t do me any good to think about these things, since I will never know. Thinking about you traps me within a whirlwind within my head, and I barely get out at all. Why do you think I had to move away? I couldn’t live near people who knew about you, they would ask docile questions and that would make me think about you for weeks on end, unable to eat or sleep. I moved away, further away from you. What the hell do I do now when you’re really gone? I had to get out of that piece of shit town where everyone knew your name and where you and I went to school. 

You tore out my heart and I wonder where you keep it now, because I can’t feel it. Do you keep it on your desk, where it has been spotted with brown dots of coffee, or on the top shelf of your bookshelf where the sunlight is slowly bleaching the red to a pale pink? I can’t imagine you’re taking care of it, either way. 

Right after you moved away, and everyone of our friends kept asking about you, I stayed up for nights in row. I stayed up for days, then slept for days, and I couldn’t eat without choking. I watched the sun go up, and I watched it go down. I had a job at the grocery store after we graduated, but I quit about a week after you left. I kept seeing people with black hair, the exact same bob you had last I saw you, and I cried in front of the customers until my boss told me to take some time for myself. I quit, and I stayed up for nights at a time. 

I suppose we weren’t extremely close, considering how easy it was for you to leave, we hadn’t even known each other for more than three years. When I notice the habits I have from you, I sink back into my head and that whirlwind of thoughts about you. I still wash my cup in the sink by hand, because you hate seeing dirty dishes. You’re still with me, you’re inside me and you control everything I do. I stand on top of bridges and watch the sunset, because you did that on nights when you were stressed. I make small talk with strangers in stores and on the train, because you were always nice to everyone you met. I mostly lie to them, though. The weather is nice, I say. I’m so excited for the weekend, I have so much fun planned, I say. I can’t believe the prices of … whatever, I say. 

I still haven’t decorated my apartment. I have what I need, but whenever the thought of decorations comes to me, I find myself so incredibly tired that I can barely stand. I have barely managed to avoid having my new friends over, I don’t know how I would explain my lack of creativity or life without mentioning you. You painted my room at my parents’ house with flowers and sunsets, animals and all the pieces of nature I adore, and the walls in my apartment are gray. I don’t even have any paintings. 

I have a bookshelf, but unlike the one in my room at my parents’, this one is painted black and holds only books without useless crap like jewelry or medicine. Sometimes I sit and go through the notes I’ve written inside books, and I wonder how I ever managed to read so much. I haven’t read a book in months. 

I still have all the pictures of you on my phone, and of course I look at them for hours on end when I can’t sleep. Sometimes I just can’t sleep without anyone having mentioned you. Sometimes sleep is a cruel torture, and I dream about you almost every night. Sometimes I keep myself awake just so that I don’t dream about you. When I dream about you holding me, and telling me that everything will be alright as long as we are together, it is like flying through a warm night just above the trees, and waking up is an ice bath with an emptiness inside me that just can’t be filled. 

I’ve convinced myself that I deserve this, because although you hurt me all the time, I found more faith in you than any church I’ve been forced to go to. 

I want to go nowhere, and I want to find you there. Time has moved slowly since you left, and I can’t believe that we were rushing to become adults together. Did we really dream about living together, or did I dream that? 

I promised you that I would love you forever, and so far I do, even after all this. I doubt you even think about me. 

I didn’t know that we were saying goodbye to each other, that rainy night in June outside your house. I didn’t say goodbye, I didn’t know that would be the last time I saw you, because I believed you would fight for me as intently as I did for you. 

Just the night before we had danced together at the party, I can’t even remember whose party it was, or even if our other friends were there. All I remember is you and I dancing around the edge of the pool in one of our classmates’ garden. With the lights behind you, in the dark you looked like you were outlined with gold. I wish I could go back. I want to hold you and know it would all be okay between us, despite any distance between us. Despite what I feel.

You plague me, still. You probably only think of me with pity. 

It wasn’t easy for you to hear that I loved you more than what friends are supposed to do, I know that. But why was it so easy for you to leave your best friend, the person who loved you in every way possible?

I know you told your girlfriend, and I know she hates me. She called me on the day you both moved away, and I still haven’t listened to the voicemail she left. She saw you with the same golden outline, and she managed to glow next to you. 

You haunt me, you’re a parasite in my brain, eating at my soft flesh and growing every day.