Emily Dickinson once wrote:

“Heart, we will forget him,
You and I, tonight!
You must forget the warmth he gave,
I will forget the light.

When You have done pray tell me,
Then I, my thoughts, will dim.
Hast! ‘lest while you’re lagging
I may remember him!”

How do you let go of someone you have been holding onto for almost two years? Especially when he is your best friend’s boyfriend, and your ex-boyfriend, and your first love, and the first guy who cheated on you, and the last guy who kissed you… and so many other dreadful superlatives he has managed to snatch up in your life? My answer is: you don’t. The hat he gave you will sit in your closet, untouched and unmoved, and the drawing he promised you will lie beneath a pile of books and forgotten papers, the tall-tale heart beneath your floorboards, beating menacingly and never ceasing. The song he used to sing you will haunt your lips, and whenever it is uttered by someone else you won’t be able to bear hearing the first few words. No matter what you do, there isn’t a day that goes by when something doesn’t remind you of him, and most days it will be you. But for her sake, how do you let go? How do go back to the way things were before it all happened? How do you erase all the memories, good and bad, that are like immortal puncture wounds, and she the salt that someone has rubbed in them? I haven’t figured it out yet. But I’m managing… Day by day I am trying to make myself forget. But he was my first and my last, and when it seems as if no one else will ever look at you the way he did, kiss you the way he did, what else can you cling to?