talonkarrde | Week 6 - I think I'll never see...

Even now, it is a knife stabbing, pushing, twisting. A wrenching, gut-churning phantom pain, one that I suspect will never fade.

Even now, sitting here six years after our first emails to each other, three years after we broke up, a year since we last saw each other.

Even now, three thousand miles from where most of our memories were made and used and wasted, I still sit here and wonder, dream, hope.

Don't you?

I'm never prepared for how sudden it hits you. It's always sitting there, just out of sight, just behind your left shoulder, waiting for an opportunity.

One moment, everything's right as rain, all systems are green, nothing's wrong, and then you see something and the world turns ever so slightly and—

—and now you're sitting back, taking deep breaths, trying to steady yourself, trying to figure out why it felt like someone just punched you, why you have tears in your eyes, why you're gritting your teeth and balling your hands into fists and staring at nothing.

It's something, anything: an old stuffed animal, a doppleganger on the street, a laugh you can't identify, a story, an email that I keep starred even though I'll never respond to it. What would I say in a reply to this email, six months, one year, three years old now?

What hasn't been said already?

It's like falling into black hole, almost. When the memory triggers, you start to remember, and you're already past the event horizon; you're already well and truly fucked. A instinctive click or an wayward thought releases the moments that you've kept locked up so carefully behind those neatly maintained walls, but now they're flooding you, overpowering you, drowning you.

How do you stop that? How do you dodge a feeling, triggered by an errant glance, smell, sound, one that gives you no warning? How do you resist whipping your head around so fast you crack your neck, only to find... nothing. Not what you hoped, the blind hope, the hope—

—that comes from love.

You don't dodge it, I don't think. You don't get used to it. You simply sit there, and sink a bit into yourself as the memories pour forth, overwhelming your neat, orderly life that doesn't have any mention or thought or room of her until it does, at which point it takes over everything and laughs at your feeble defenses, your poor constructs.

If you're lucky, the memories fade; it happens less and less often.

Not everyone is lucky.

We last spoke at length in late 2011, almost two years ago now.

We said plenty but listened more, and quietly shared a few hours together, away from the world. We gave each other gifts of words, of thoughts, of memories, and then we signed off, and went back to our separate lives.

I told her I loved her then, two years after we had broken up; I still do, today.

In a Hollywood romance, we would have declared each other our true loves and ridden off into the sunset, perhaps with an 'as you wish,' uttered. We both loved The Princess Bride, of course.

But you know as well as I do that Hollywood sells dreams, not reality.

And yet...

And yet, what we had isn't diminished for the fact that we aren't together now. While I miss the future that could have been, I treasure even more the past that was.

Even with the pain and regret that strikes so suddenly, so sharply, even after wishing there were more lovely, fantastic stories we wrote together and sweet, quiet moments we shared together — there's something else here too, a feeling that may be less forceful but is more constant, even everpresent.

"I know I was happy to spend time with you, but I don't know what we accomplished together other than to build castles in the sky and make each other happy with our mutual love of discovering new treasures: writing, art, music, and romance."

She wrote that to me. It came after something happy, and it came before something sad, and I think it was meant to be almost doubtful, a transition, intended or not.

But to me, building castles in the sky, discovering and sharing treasures of writing and art and music and romance — there is nothing that I would rather do in this world, and nothing I would rather do with the person I love.

And to think, we had years together like that.

And so, yes, I see stories that remind me of her and they tear at me sometimes, but they also remind me that I would not have read as much without her. They remind me that I would not have known as much without her. And more than anything, they remind me that I would not have loved as I did, without her.

I don't know if she'll ever read these words, but I know she understands how I feel. In a way, I'm simply summarizing six years of a friendship, of a brief but wonderful relationship, and those summaries aren't needed for those who lived it, are they?

But you, dear reader, you who are reading these words — if there is someone with whom you have spent time building castles in the sky, let them know. Let them know, and no matter what happens, treasure those moments you had and those dreams you shared.

And if there isn't someone who you've found, yet, I hope that they come soon, and you share those loves and those discoveries, those giddy moments and those quiet ones, and you remember them for the rest of your life.