He Is Three Hours Away And I Hate It

Am I ever going to be over him?

I look in the mirror at my hair that’s blonde again and ask myself if I continue to change my appearance if I’ll eventually not look like the person he used to love. The person who used to say, “Can we stay here forever?” to when we’d finally exhausted the limits of hitting the snooze button but were still tangled up under my sheets. The person who asked me to be there when his grandma got sick, who I held on the floor after we tried to fuck the pain away.

I haven’t heard his voice in too long but even thinking about his smile makes me want to throw up. His name came up when co-workers and I were brainstorming ideas for a project and I pictured having to face him and I just froze. I couldn’t breathe.

Am I ever going to be able to breathe again?

I say things like, “No more actors” or “No more smokers” or “No more mountain boys” but really I might as well just call a spade a spade. I’m saying: “No more HIM. Nothing that reminds me of HIM.” I can’t stand the idea of not being able to have him. So I date the polar opposite and try to pretend like it’s working when really I’m just wondering when it will be over and I can go back to missing something that’s never coming back.

It’s pathetic, and I know it. I have called myself pathetic more than anybody ever could. But I can’t stop. It’s like I’m addicted to feeling like the static on a TV you can’t get away from and reminding myself of a pain that is my heroin.

I’m trying, I’m really trying. I put it on paper, on the internet, say I’m giving it out into the universe so I can stop internalizing it. And to a certain extent it’s worked. I’ve said, “I forgive him.” I think about glitter bombing him just for fun so that we can at least say, “Wow you were an asshole” to each other and move on.

But I always ask if I am actually going to be able to keep this up?

Then, one day, I’m sitting on my couch drinking a homemade mimosa and I find out he moved. He actually left his home state when he said for years that he never would. And to make it harder? He’s three hours away.

Three hours away isn’t that far. It doesn’t take a full tank of gas; you can barely get through a sliver of one of our states. Three hours away is like, a thirty minute plane ride. It’s a drop in a bucket, barely making a splash. You could walk it in a handful days if you really had the will power. Three hours away is nothing. And I hate it.

Three hours to most might seem like forever to some but three hours has never felt more like my backyard that in that moment. More in the back of mind than ever. I wanted to call him and tell him to go away, to ask why he would do this to me, do this without me, to say to leave me alone.

But I also wanted to hop onto a bus and show up on his doorstep like a character out of a bad, 80s movie and ask him:

“Do you think I’ll ever get over you?”