Again

               What is it about you that makes me unable to forget you?

               What is it that has imprinted the image of you into my brain permanently?

               Is it your hair? Your eyes? Your height? Is it your lips? Your hands?

               Or is it all the above and everything they represent?

               Like the way I ran my fingers through your hair, even when you’d get it cut so short it was almost nonexistent.

               The way your beautiful blue eyes looked at me in just the right way to let me know what you were thinking at that moment.

               The way you are so much taller than me that I can fit underneath your arm, but it never made anything awkward. If anything, it made everything better.

               The way your lips would curl into the most perfect smile I had ever seen, and when they’d kiss me so gently it almost felt like a whisper against my skin.

               Or the way your hands, though significantly larger than my baby hands, fit perfectly with mine no matter the size difference. And the way they fit together made it feel like home.

               I don’t know what it is about you exactly that makes me so incapable of getting you out of my mind. I really, truly, have no idea what it is.

               I wish with every ounce of my being that I could pin-point one specific thing about you and shun it from my brain, so I could forget about you forever. But I can’t. It is impossible for my heart and my mind to come together as one and agree that you need to be gone for good. Even though it would be for the good of me. Wouldn’t it?

               I had forgotten about you. I remember.

The last night I thought about you was November 16^th, 2016. I guess it was technically the 17^th by that point because it was 3:49 AM when I texted you. The worst part was I was texting you because I had gotten over you. I was so angry because I didn’t miss you anymore. I guess that just shows the damage alcohol can do to an emotional person.

That was the last time I thought of you, like really thought of you, for a year, a month, and fifteen days. I didn’t contact you. I tried to be friends with you once or maybe twice in that time, but I never really wanted to. I completely forgot about you and everything you stood for.

Then you reached out to me. I knew it was you. You didn’t say. But I knew.

Don’t ask me how I knew. I think people have this connection with one another, and in cases like that, they just know.

It was simple. “Text me? You know.”

I didn’t react. I think I didn’t react because you were right, I did know. I wanted to be wrong. To this day I wish I had been wrong. I wish I had texted someone completely different because maybe I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this complete nonsense that no one really cares to hear about. God, I could have. A part of me thought maybe I was just assuming because I wanted it to be you. I wanted you to care about me again. But I knew it was wrong to think it could be anyone else.

And it was.

Because it was you.

Here you were again, well over a year later. You. Reaching out to me. Wanting to be back in my life. Offering to start over. Missing me. Like I didn’t miss you.

I should have known it would break me. I should have known it would get to me. Get right underneath my fragile, thin skin. You always do. And I let you.

Now here I am, two months later, having no contact with you yet again. Probably for good. Part of me hopes it’s for good. Lord knows another part of me will always hope it’s not. I’m sitting here, thinking of you, writing about it, and hating that that’s all I know how to do. It’s all I’ve ever known how to do.

I don’t know how I stopped before.

I don’t know how I ever wanted someone else.

I don’t know how I ever wanted you to be gone.

I don’t know how I’ll ever want that again.

I don’t know if I’ll ever want that again.