i die everyday without you

i like to doubt my love for you because it makes me feel bad about myself, and when i feel bad about myself i can focus on me and not you and the fact that you’re gone, and i can torture myself with fixating on all my own mistakes and regrets and my shameful actions and my lies and maybe for a few moments i can escape you and your memory that haunts me like a ghost that i can’t quite see, because maybe i don’t deserve to see you, and if i don’t deserve you maybe that’s why you’re not here, and if you were here maybe you wouldn’t love me if you knew me, and if you didn’t love me and i loved you maybe it would hurt and ache like fucking hell but it would also make sense, but maybe it’s not possible that your love would have ever died if you hadn’t, and what’s possible now is even scarier, and it’s that you are nothing and nowhere to feel anything about me or anyone else you loved, and in believing you are nothing and nowhere and gone, wiped away like an afterthought from this earth, then i fucking hate this earth and everything on it, and the rage within me boils at the world for taking you from me, and from my mother, and from my thoughts without these tears forming every time without fail, because i can’t think about you even now without crying, even now i am not free to think of you in any happy light in a meaningful and true and genuine way because even though we had so much happiness with you, we lost it all when we lost you, and i lost everything you taught me, it all fell out of my brain like mush, and i started to forget myself, and my kindness, and my grace and my patience, and my love, and how to love, and how to act and respect myself and respect others and be myself, be genuine, embrace the pain, i just couldn’t do any of it because none of it mattered like it used to, because you’re gone now, and i love you, and even if i never deserved your love, i always had it and i always will, and i know it, and you will always have my love for you and my heart too, and i don’t even have to say that because i know it’s true and if you’re not nothing and nowhere, i know you know it’s true too, and it isn’t even worth saying at this point because of how very true it is, and sometimes i feel crazy and alight with the force of missing you and loving you, and sometimes i feel like it never goes away, the pain and the hurt, and i can’t quite shake the feeling of emptiness thinking of the chairs you sat in, the beds you slept in, sleeping next to you on vacation listening to you snoring, thinking of the last time i ever laid by your side, the last time i got to hug you, the last time i saw you, and i want to slap myself senseless for not holding you for just a moment longer, just a little closer, but strangely i remember that last hug we had and i remember the love i put into it, and i remember that something felt somewhat strange and off and i couldn’t put my finger on exactly why, maybe i hadn’t seen you in a while before that, which means probably only a few weeks because i saw you all the time, or maybe i knew somehow or some way that i should hug you with extra love that day, and i am glad i did, and i miss you so much that i can hardly stand it, and i don’t know what to do or where to turn or how to unpack how i feel and have always felt, and when people ask if i was close with any of my grandparents, i say yes, i was close to my grandma, my mom’s mom, when really i want to say, i don’t want to talk about it, or, my grandma was everything to me, and she’s gone now, and shut the fuck up about her because i sure do, because i can’t say two goddamn words about her without crying my eyes out at 23 even though you passed when i was 12, more than half my age now, and it’s scary that i don’t know where you are or if you’re still out there somewhere, because of course i want to believe that, and i think you believed that, but i don’t know what i believe, i just know what i want to be true, and that scares me because what i want is rarely real and tangible and good enough to be true, and i just feel sad right now thinking about you and what could have been, and about the life you deserved, and about the years stolen from you, and i want to know what you would tell me to do, i want to hear from you, i want a sign, or a symbol or a word, and i know it’s greedy but i want you to tell me it’s all okay and that you love me and that you’re proud of who i’ve become, and i want to know it’s okay to miss you and mourn you, and that it’s okay when i’m not missing you and mourning you too, that it’s okay to try to move on the best i can without you here, even though it’s hard, even though it makes me think about how i’m ever going to deal with the other tragedies at hand in this life, and i don’t think i’m equipped to handle them well at all, but i will handle them, i think, as i handled saying goodbye to you, in the only way i can.