If I knew when it would end, perhaps I could bear the pain I feel every waking moment of the day.

I had no idea that missing you would get worse as time goes on, not easier. I feel my overarching sadness more keenly with each day that passes, enduring the sting of being 24 hours further removed from the happiness and love we shared. It was you and me against the world, and that gave me a reason to care. Now I don’t have that. All I have is the gaping hole in my heart that you left behind.

I stay in bed as long as I can in the morning, willing my eyes shut, numbing the memories for a few minutes longer. I know that as soon as I begin to go about my day, my emotions will simmer just below the surface, threatening to erupt at any moment. It’s exhausting, this gamut that I run through over and over again. I’m so tired of missing you, but I can’t shut my brain off. I cannot wish you away, so instead I live like a raw nerve, exposed and vulnerable at all times.

Everything that I do reminds me of you in some way or another. I cannot even touch myself anymore without crumbling at the knowledge that I’ll never feel the tender electricity of your embrace again.

This place stifles me with constant reminders of everything we shared and everything we planned to do but never accomplished. Our town is too oppressively small to contain the amount of sorrow it brings me to stroll its streets without you by my side. I kept our memories close back when I believed that I would get a lifetime of loving you, but now I’d do anything to completely erase them. Erase the pain that you left behind when you turned your back and moved on, leaving me here with a broken heart and a shattered future.

Yes, I dared to let myself envision a future with you as my lifelong adventure partner, sharing my laughter, my curiosity, and my heart. What a fool I am.

Now I spend each day just trying to make it to the next, one after the other, until I finally reach the point where everything hurts a little less. I would give anything to stop missing you. What can I do? I loved you, and I did not want you to go, and I lost you despite the adoration I felt for you each and every day that we spent together. If I’m completely honest, I suppose I’m still in denial that you’re no longer mine to love, to hold, and to grow alongside.

I would have done anything for you, but it doesn’t matter.

Please, someone tell me when I’ll stop feeling this way so that I can stand it. Because right now, I don’t know how much longer I can.