You wake up and every single day it’s that reminder of the pain that is still present. Everyone says it’ll go away. It’ll get easier. It’ll stop hurting so much. But when you’re overcome with just this numb feeling that doesn’t subside, you just want to lay there. You don’t want to get up. You don’t want to move. You don’t want to do anything that day. You want to fall back to sleep because it’s easier to get lost in dreams than be hit hard with the reality of what it is you are feeling.

You want simply to make it go away. But it doesn’t. It’s just there consuming all that you are. It’s there with every thought. And you replay the past in your mind thinking about what led up to this. What you could have changed. Was it your fault? How do you fix this?

You lay there for a moment wondering if they miss you too. Wondering if today will be the day you hear from them. Then another day without them begins.

Then you muster any strength you have left to just get up and start your day. You look at your calendar and just wonder how much longer the weight of these feelings are going to consume you. Next week. Next month. But when all you are trying to do is get through the next 24 hours every day is like a marathon of your life without them in it.

Then your day starts and everything reminds you of them. Every song you listen to. Every step that you take. Every word that you say. And you’re going through the motions but you feel lost and empty and hollow. Like when they left they took everything that made you who you were. When they left they took the best parts of you. Because in your mind the best part of you was always them.

And you’ve felt and overcome pain before but this time it’s different. This time it doesn’t feel like you are going to heal or get better. Maybe just learn to live without them. Learn to live broken. Learn to live when you don’t even feel like you’re living you are just doing what you have to, to survive. 24 hours seem so long when you are fixated on the past.

And everyone asks how you are doing, and you say fine because no one wants to hear you cried yourself to sleep last night. No one wants to hear you aren’t even hungry. No one wants to hear you can’t sleep at night without taking something and even when you do you awake at 3 am and the pain hurts even more.

Then the thought creeps up they are probably sleeping peacefully unfazed by the pain they’ve caused and what it is you’re going through. And you wonder how can you feel everything so deeply for someone who doesn’t even care that you’re hurting? Because there was once a time they did. And the past plagues you with regret as you replay all the good moments.

And that’s what haunts you the most are the good times. And you cling to it like it’s something you’ll forget. But the truth is even if you had the choice to forget them you wouldn’t want to. Even if you knew the outcome would be one you falling to your knees alone, you’d still choose them. Because even with all this pain that feels heavy in your chest you know that it’s better to have known them. Loved them. Given it your all. And felt everything. Then never have experienced it at all.

And when people ask even when tears are streaming down your face saying their name, you know they are still the best thing that’s ever happened to you.