I already know what you’re about. I already know that you already miss someone, or that you might be in a relationship, where in fact, you wonder what it would feel like to miss that person. That’s why you opened this article, isn’t it? Missing someone isn’t just “a thing” that one plans to feel. You don’t look at the person you love and think to yourself “I’m going to miss you one day.” You never plan to ever miss that person, because that person is never someone that you’d expect to miss. They’ll always be there, right?

Wrong. Sometimes they’re not always there. Sometimes they leave your life out of nowhere and all that’s left is their memory. Sometimes you might not care at first, and then when the absence of their presence fully sinks in, it’s too late and you can’t handle it. Sometimes they’re permanently gone, and there is nothing you can do about it.

Do you ever fully forget somebody? Does the day of your anniversary, or the day of their birthday, ever become a regular day of the year? Do you just forget the days you’ve spent together? That time in the park, or that time abroad? What kind of days are they now? Can you ever go back to these places without that person coming across your mind, even if just for a second?

I don’t believe so. I don’t believe that a memory with someone will ever go away. That time you watched an entire little league game in Central Park, or that time you spent a full four hours at a random wine bar with, talking about how Pluto totally got fucked out of being a planet.

And in reality, if you really think about it, to miss someone is to sort of miss a part of yourself. You miss yourself with that person. You miss who they made you become. You became alive. You became ecstatic; enchanted; jubilant. You became the best form of yourself. And then out of nowhere.. you weren’t you. Suddenly, you became someone that you weren’t familiar with. You can’t keep a solid thought and your body aches for sleep. You appear okay from the outside, but your mind is screaming in ways you’ve never heard. You’re paralyzed to even helping yourself. You’re driving down the highway blasting Boston by Augustana, slowly losing yourself, because in reality, you lost apart of yourself by losing someone you love. Some commercials or foods become unbearable because it was your thing with them. Bananas? Forget it. Life insurance policies? Don’t even think about it. You convince yourself that you’ll never be happy, because how could you? How could you be happy without them? How can you ever experience all of those same things with somebody else?

Missing someone is almost equivalent to witnessing a four year old child misplacing their parent in the middle of the mall. That moment of vulnerability. That moment of fear. All you want to do is cry and hope that a stranger will come to the rescue and help you find where you belong. It cuts like a fucking knife.

So in closing, and what I personally think, is that when you miss someone, you pretty much miss apart of yourself. Take a look around and realize that there is so much more of you to be loved, and not enough of you to be missed. Because while you were behind that door crumbling, the rest of the world was moving on.