Forcing Myself To Forget You

Sometimes when I think about you, you were once so close. You were my everything, a quintessential part of me. Now, you’re so far away. So unattainable, simply lost in the past amidst all the other memories we made.

I struggle to put my feelings into words. All the emotions I’ve felt since losing you, all the pain – it washes over me, leaving my soul empty. Deep within, I still want to know why on the darkest nights, every fiber of my being still aches for your presence. Even after all that happened – even after all this time – I miss you.

I think about you over and over again, until my thoughts become a broken record, and I wonder whether I’m stuck in a fragment of my own imagination. I hope desperately that if I think about you enough, my mind will tire itself out and move on to something new. I try to remember the sound of your voice, your laugh – all too familiar, yet so distant. The memory of it echoes through every corner of my mind, but I know I’ll never hear it again.

Every memory we made together, every object that reminds me of you, every place we went to, I have to overwrite with something new. As I encounter each one of those things, I let myself feel all over again. Feel the pain, feel the anger, feel the grief, feel the yearning for your love just one more time. Relive those moments from start to finish.

One by one, I cross them out and write in something new.

As the days go by and the months pass, the idea of ‘us’ slips away through my fingers like sand, slowly replaced by a newfound appreciation of ‘me’. I learned to walk this path again on my own. I was reminded that you walked part of the way with me, once holding me tight. And then you let me go – setting me free. I am still haunted by the storms in my mind, and the memories you left me – still strangely fresh and vivid, yet clouded over. But I carry on.

You walk your path now with someone new. I hope she understands your tumultuous mind better than I did, and I hope you gift her in return with truly unconditional love – the love I wish we could’ve saved.

But as we walk further and further apart from each another, I can’t help but to release little pieces of what we had from the depths of my mind, and forgive you for how you hurt me. And when I’m ready, I’ll lay what we had to rest, leaving it behind in the past.

Maybe one day, our paths will cross again. Maybe I’ll have a chance to hear your voice, just as I had longed for. But until then, I’ll be forcing myself to forget you.