I never thought I'd have to say goodbye.

Losing you was the first time I truly understood the pain of letting go. "How do you look at the one you love and tell yourself its time to walk away?" That Nicholas Sparks quote that every girl loves meant everything to me in our last moments together. I learned something from The Vow, as corny as that is. I learned that you have to let go when the one you love has changed. It's time to move on when you don't know who they are anymore, and if it's meant to be then you will find your place in this world together one day. Maybe, just maybe, you'll fall in love with the person they became. But that’s about as likely as meeting Superman.

When you fall in love with someone, you fall in love with the person they are in that moment. So when someone changes, it's like going through a terrible break-up and waking up to find someone else laying next to you. A stranger is pretending to take the place of someone that meant everything to you. However, an impostor isn't always the last person you want when you're mourning. In a way it makes the breaking-up part easier because the person you fell in love with is already gone. At the same time, it makes the loneliness all the worse, because even if they weren't the same they were feeding that thirst for human skin and helping you cope with the loss you were trying to deny. So, in a way, it makes the emptiness ten times more painful.

You reach a point when tears are senseless, but they roll down your cheeks uncontrollably anyway. Your fits of balling in the middle of the night after you wake up and remember reality diminish, and now you’re on to the silence. Silence is the worst form of pain. Fighting at least gives you something to think about. Fighting is about the word choices you make, the way you pause at just the right moment to make your pain tangible, and about knowing when it no longer matters whether you win or not. Silence, though, is deafening. There is nothing left. There are no words to be said. So you are filled with an emptiness that shakes you, breaks you. Silence carries on, ceaseless. It comes only when you’re alone at your weakest, so there is no way to escape it. It is in those moments that you talk to yourself in your head, repeating the lines as if your rehearsing the conversation that never was. There were words to keep him in close proximity if he ever had an epiphany and went back to the old version. These words echo through your soul and fill every waking moment, ceaselessly. While your rehearsing the tears fall, in that soundless oblivion that always finds you, and they sound like an explosion that shakes the roof of your unstable house. The walks have already crumbled, and you’re terrified of another storm. It feels like if you cry again you’re so weak that the crumbles left would dissolve. It's a new goal each day to hold it together. You wish you would've kept your mouth shut, did what he wanted, and put up with his bull s***. He was the cement, the base, the foundation of everything you are.

Seeing is not the only reminder that can put you in this state. Smells, movies, books, foods, sayings, poems, rooms, couples, eyes, sports, shoes, colors, expressions, flowers, clothes, feelings… everything sparks recognition of something in the months of memories you made. It's amazing how you can be going through life, happy, and then all of the sudden you see a car that looks like his and it dawns on you all over again. I walked away from everything we had and everything we shared. I spent the next infinity trying to forget someone who gave me everything to remember. But you see, trying to forget someone you love is like trying to remember someone you've never met. Love stories are supposed to be hopeful… when there is a happy ending. "Our story had three parts: a beginning, a middle and an end. And although this is the way that all stories unfold, I still can't believe ours didn't last forever."

Oh, what to do when you don't know what to do anymore. There's nothing left. I don't need Tylenol to fix this sickness. I just need my heart back. I need a second chance, or even a rewind. I want to relive the happiest moments. It'll be like reading my favorite book over and over, or watching the same movie. The love story never ends, never changes, and always has the same result. It's beautiful. I would rather live a thousand lives with you, ceaselessly, than just one without you. I miss the old you. The version of you that brings me Reese’s, plays with my hair, and watches me do just about everything was the Romeo I thought I would spend the rest of my life with. I cry as I write this, remembering how those beautiful eyes would scan my face, begging to read just half. I try to remind myself what you did, and try to make myself hate you. You see, the hardest part about your lies is knowing I wasn't worth the truth.

The silence is deafening. My life without you is oblivion. I've never felt so lonely or so empty. Silence, oblivion, loneliness, and emptiness all have one thing in common. They all follow real loss. There is a pain in my heart that is ceaseless. There is a pain in my heart that he will never see because it always appears when he is not here. There is a pain that comes with the silence. And it is ceaseless.