Even Though You’re Gone, I Still Smile Because Of You

I smile because my journey suddenly became safer knowing I will never be scared of seeing you again. The roads appear a lot cleaner because your footprints have disappeared and left no marks this time. I glide up and down the steps like a slide because I don’t have to be worried about crashing into you again.

I smile because I am starting to breathe lighter when the thoughts of you are no longer suffocating me. When your troublesome past stopped becoming my nightmares and started fading into a distant dream. When your struggles stopped being my pain and instead replaced with the black hollowness I felt before I met you but only now, it seems so much more colorful.

I smile because your absence filled the space next to me with stronger walls. The walls I thought could hold out anybody but you proved that they were still too weak. These new walls stand a little better, rise a little higher and are even built a little thicker to keep out anyone I used to think were worthy of me. Anyone who never fought down the walls I would have already teared down for them.

I smile because my inbox is clear of any messages from you. Messages that will make me catch my breath and forget how to breathe again. Words that will make me question walking away from you and re-think every thought I used to ever think of you. Words I know will weight me down to the same floor I used every muscle in my body to pull myself up from.

I smile because no matter what happens to me, nothing can compare to the pain of you. My heart no longer bleeds when all the wrong people are supposed to scar me. It no longer throbs for days when anyone begins walking out of my life because no one else has been able to leave me broken quite like how you did.

I smile because I stopped blaming myself for decisions I thought were right at a time everything was going wrong. Simply because some choices didn’t turn out the way I had hoped for does not mean that I was weak and made mistakes. If anything, I was strong for taking terrifying chances. I stopped regretting every difficult move I made because I can see now that they are only making me move a lot freer.

If you and I were ever meant to be, somehow the stars will change their positions and fate will re-connect our roads to bring us back together again. Maybe our story once had a happy ending in another life. And if this life is not for us, there is still so many more yet to come.

I smile because despite how many months flew by or how each age feels like a new beginning, nothing has ever made me smile the way you do. Your memories shine a light on my darkest nights and make the rain feel like a blanket on my gloomiest days. They remind me that despite how alone I feel at moments, there was a time I used to be with someone who brought out the best parts of me others couldn’t uncover. Someone who I am glad never stopped smiling because otherwise, I would have never been able to fall in love with that smile.

I smile because I once had something people everywhere are dying to understand, dying to find. Something I once thought was impossible and now I know not everyone can experience such a miracle.

I hope you can still think of the good times that will last forever even if we couldn’t. The ones we can bring back to life in our minds and the ones that make the bad times feel like a forgotten memory.

Wherever you are, and whoever you are with, I hope you are smiling too. Smiling for the great friends you are surrounded by and for the many gifts life has given you especially the ones not wrapped in a box. Smiling when you look down at her and realize, at last, you no longer have a reason not to smile.

I hope that you didn’t erase me completely and that it is still possible for me to cross your mind again.

And when I do, I hope that it will give you another reason to smile.