1387 Days

"My questions to you keep me up at night- how do I escape this? How do I make it all stop? I wonder to myself for hours while I'm unable to sleep, even when I'm entirely exhausted. I try my hardest every single day to push through all these thoughts, the feelings, the hurt, the emotional torture, but it seems that I still wear the scars from all that you are, and my body still keeps the score, all the while, you didn't even try to tend to the wounds."

*****

That was her last journal entry. The last words I can repeat knowing they were hers, no matter how heartbreaking. She didn't leave a note. I don't think I needed one, because I knew without a doubt, how ferociously she loved me because she showed me every day how much she cared. Maybe I could have done more to show her that she was the light in my world. Maybe I let her down, but the 'what ifs' haunted me for long enough. 

Six years had passed since she cut them out of her life. Six entire years without the people who gave her life, even when they wished they hadn't. Sure, they hurt her physically, but that she had pushed past, worked her way through. It was the emotional hurt, the scars it left, riddling her with mental health issues going as far back as she could remember. She had tried to end her life, more than once, she harmed herself just to alleviate the pain, and yet she was still so haunted by a past she couldn't forget. She knew others could empathize with the situation, she had siblings who bore witness and even experienced to some extent, but she couldn't feel more alone if she tried. She was so desperately sad it was painful to see and even worse to love her; not because she was difficult or hard to love, in fact, she was the opposite - she had been hurt by this world so badly but she was a light to others, even if she was too in the dark to see for herself. It was difficult to love her because it ached my soul to know what she had gone through and that she didn't love herself, she couldn't see her value and she couldn't accept the love she so rightly deserved. I wanted to change that for her more than I'd ever wanted anything in my entire life. I was going to change that, I was driven by my love and my selfish need to keep her here, and by my side, even when I knew she was passed living for herself. 

She hid so much of her torment, from as many as she could, not just because she found it difficult to open up, but because she felt she was a burden to others, that her problems weren't fair to offload on anyone. She would get embarrassed by how she lived, how she tried to function through the bad days and so she would overcompensate; she would give so much of herself away helping others, there wasn't much of her left. But I loved her and so I wanted to fix her, to save her. I wondered if that made me into some weird guy with a hero complex, but on the contrary, I wanted to help the person I loved to see her worth and get on the road to recovering who she was. I just wanted to help and my intentions were always pure, but I feel as though that was the worst mistake I could have made. 

Three years, 9 months, 2 weeks and 4 days I spent with my soul mate. I got 1387 days of my time here with the person who was made for me, the woman who's soul was intertwined with mine and will be woven into who I am in this world forever. I want to talk about the passage of time after a loss. Some days it feels as though it was only yesterday, while others it feels as if it's been 20 years. In reality, it has been over three years now since the worst day of my existence, that is yet also a reminder that my mortality is one step closer, giving me the hope that I am now nearer to spending my own forever with her. I have spent my time alone grieving in the home we shared together with the dog I got for her to keep her company of the days she felt most alone. I spent my time ignoring others' offers of help and solace and eventually, they stopped offering me their time. I was okay with that, however, as it gave me more time and space to look into how I could help her even now after she'd been gone for so long. I wanted to find her the justice and the closure she would have wanted to seek had she not have given in to the demons that slowly drowned her. 

I spent 6 months tracking people down from her past, searching online for things that would help prove my case, things that would show they are responsible for a humans life ceasing to exist. Evidence of the cruelest of actions a human could perform. I even arranged meetings under the guise of anything but the truth, because I had to get this closure for her, it was what she needed, what she wanted, what she craved. I became obsessed. I used to believe that the love of my life hid out up there in her head so that the reality of what her trauma meant for her couldn't eat her alive. I don't think that anymore. I think she spent her days trapped inside her mind, only renting out space in her head to those who paid no way. 

I knew that now, now that three whole years had passed me by, leaving me isolated in my own home, where I had avoided my friends, my family, my work, my passions and my sense of self. I couldn't give the final pieces of myself to her because that's not what she would have wanted. She had been consumed by her past, she had been haunted by her own existence and after she left, the hole in me almost did the same. I realize now that the story only gets sadder more hopeless if I did the same. I know what her leaving, left behind, and even though I spent so long being removed from my reality, I couldn't do that to my family, knowing they might feel even a little of what I felt after she was gone from this world. 

I know now that moving on from my past is the only chance I have at being lucky enough to forget. She could not escape her past, she lived there till it ate what was left of her, and so the only thing I have left to do is to learn from that. I am choosing to learn that shutting yourself down and hiding in your own head only lets them win, and leaves the world a little bright. So I will choose to live on for her, and also myself, while I close the chapter, but not the book.

Goodbye, but not the end.