I Lost Him

I lost him. I lost him, and I never even had him. He let go once I’d had a taste of him, of us, of what we could’ve been.

One minute he said he was missing me and we talked about passports and tickets, and the next, it’s that awkward “hello” that will never happen.

I can’t have had him, I barely did. Yet brekky now is a tasteless burden, I wake up with the excitement that maybe today, he’ll ring me up and tell me to go eat with him, only then to remember I’m gone and I can’t even go back to the places we used to visit and mourn what we used to be, because it’s all so far away, so out of my reach, so gone.

We talked about hour-long Skype calls, and now don’t even have one word texts. I feel empty inside, and thing is, it’s not because I lost the boy I knew from day one I’d have to let go. I lost myself.

For the first time since I met him, it no longer seems logical, natural, for him to be in my life. Like there was no other way things could go, and that’s a painful realisation to come to any day of the week.

I lost my routine, my favourite places, I had my life surgically removed and I never gave consent. I was diagnosed, taken away, and treated. And now, healthy and living “the full life”, I feel the emptiness of the hole of what was once there, take supplements to try and counteract the same functions, and fail miserably.

It’s easy to mourn a boy, when you feel dead inside. To call it a breakup, when you’re looking for a reason to breathe, to cry, to sleep. It’s harder to explain that yes, I have nothing to complain about, but I also have nothing to look forward to, and that’s a thousand times deadlier.

It’s impossible to call for help when the words aren’t there. When you pick up a pen and paper, and the blank space says exactly what you urge to communicate. There’s nothing. I feel nothing.

I move robotically through the spaces of my beautiful home, fill the hours with my blank job, I find one hour of happiness, of music, and then it’s gone, and I feel it. That emotion, or lack thereof, is haunting and acts as my not-so-gentle lover - every single night.

So I’ll keep saying that I lost him, because on top of everything else, I actually did. I’ll say I miss the feeling of being squished and held and kissed and loved. Of laughing and arguing in the middle of the night. I’ll remember his voice, saying he was so happy to be here, with a beautiful woman in his arms, and never doubting for a minute that I was beautiful, and I was his woman. I miss everything about him. I miss who I was with him.

I lost him. And I barely even had him. I could’ve loved him.

I lost me. And everything that came with me. I didn’t have enough time.