This is your first love, eventually you’ll get better, and it won’t hurt as bad in a little while. Trust me. It happens to everybody, darling.


Somehow, I didn’t feel better when my mom told me this. It was only the second day of being without Tom. I didn’t feel pretty, or wanted, I felt alone. I felt sad. Sick. Heart-broke. Weary. Irritable. Disgusting. Depressed. Everything, I felt everything except…Happiness.

I didn’t feel happy. I felt myself growing lonelier with every second that passed in time. I wanted to run away somewhere. Someplace, where people didn’t want to talk about Tom, and how he was one of the few true athletes to come out of my minuscule school. I didn’t want to talk about how we were one of the best athletic couples that dominated.

No, I wanted away from each person, the world.

I would catch myself thinking about him; his sweet little smirk, or his chiming laugh that seemed to be echoing through my body’s core. I would remember his warm hugs or his soft kisses on my forehead when I was sad. I memorized his face when he was cheerful and sad, that deep look in his eyes when he was thinking about something serious, or the way he looked at me when he told me he loved me.

Breathe. Breath in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out.

That was my life now. Breathing. That every time I thought about him, time and space stood still, and for one moment, I had him where I wanted him. Back in my arms, back in my life, with me.

Sleep was the best, I didn’t dream about him like I typically thought I would. I dreamt of nothing but a dark abyss where I had nothing, and nothing had me. But

But when I’d wake up, momentarily, in that hazy in-between of sleep, he was mine again. Only briefly, before realization would bear down on you, almost to the point of suffocation, then it would hit you. Hit, it was too easy of a word, realization would punch you. And then, you’d crawl out of bed, and drop to the floor, and breathe again. You tell yourself it’ll get better with time. With each day that passes, memories won’t flood your mind as much, it’ll back off, drop by drop, and they will stop. You keep telling yourself this, because if you don’t, you know you will surely go mad.

Then you stand up, brush yourself off, and get ready for the day that you won’t remember tomorrow. Because remembering, memories…


They hurt like hell.