It’s been years since I have seen you, almost three years to be exact. And I’m honestly not sure if I ever will again.

I can go months without speaking your name and months without even having you cross my mind. It’s a relief not to have you in my head every waking moment. It’s a breath of fresh air to not have my heart rate speed up whenever I see your picture. But then, people ask me how you are and I feel my eyes shifting down to the floor because I have no idea how you are. And I have no idea who you are anymore.

I used to think I fully recovered from losing you. Like I would be able to live my life fully without thinking about you again. But how does anyone fully recover from the loss of a great love? I wish I knew. Because while I sometimes go months without you in my head, I can be reminded of you in an instant and all of a sudden I don’t feel so powerful anymore.

There is a red wooden box in my room that I rarely touch because I know the effect it’s going to have on me. No matter how good I feel about myself or how happy I am, that box fills me with sad nostalgia and I don’t know how to make it stop. It forces me to stand in my present and watch my past creep up. And I remember how much I loved you. And I remember how much you loved me. And I remember the love, the lust, the beginning and the end. How can you look at the memories you’ve had and loved and not feel some sort of ache in your chest? How do you read the letters from someone who once loved you and not feel your stomach drop?

It is a painful realization to know that you and I will never share those memories again. We will never be who we once were – utterly and blissfully in love with one another. And we will never look at each other in the way that we used to. It scares me that the words you used to write to me still affect me to this day. And how sometimes when I walk by the bench we used to sit on, it still makes me pause for a second.

I know trying to forget someone is an impossible task. And I would never want to erase the love that we so beautifully shared. But after years of working so hard on letting you go, I’m scared of the fact that the memories I keep in that red wooden box still haunt me.