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Things have changed. Moments are forgotten or given less attention. But they haven’t gotten any less beautiful.

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You left, but so much of you still exists.

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I can look at a picture from Christmas Day 2003 and be instantly transported back to the day. I can remember the joy I experienced. The memories I made. That picture is my return ticket. That picture is my time machine. 

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There are mornings I wake up dreaming about my sweet, sweet memories, leading me to wonder why they are now just memories alone.

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I missed you. And I still miss you. But I learned that it was more painful to question our friendship and to question myself than it was to realize that sometimes people come and go, and that this is just part of life.

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My closet is full, but my bed is empty; a result of choices, regret, and time.

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I learned it from the Neapolitan ice cream. That was when it started. 

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Nothing monumental had happened, no shooting stars or smoke signals or obvious signs of any kind had descended. But by this point, I understood the message. I had come back because something told me to.

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When something—a smell, a sound, a taste—induces nostalgia for me, it isn’t for my actual experiences, nor is it for a rose-tinted past that I lived differently to how I view it. It’s for past me’s romanticized version of the future.

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Promise me, before you go and long for a fire that has been extinguished, consider the fact that the lost love you are dreaming about, ended for a reason.