And so I learned to live without him. It was so hard in the beginning because I was just a child; it was unimaginable agony. But as time marched on I realised that, as painful as it was, it wasn't the end of the world despite how much it felt like it at the time. That being said, however, I still carry the heartache with me; sometimes I find myself thinking of him when I have nothing else to do and it hurts me again. It had been seven years since I last saw him and it still feels like he was taken away from me whenever I think about it. I don't even have a picture of him – he exists now only as a memory, frozen as an eleven year-old. And as I grew from a child to a teenager, experiencing all the changes that were part and parcel of the process, occasionally wondering how he might have changed. I became tall, thin and I let my hair grow once my mother stopped demanding I cut it whenever she deemed it an unacceptable length, so when I saw myself in a mirror and was reminded of just how different I am now, I wondered how different he would look after nearly a decade. Would he, too, be tall and thin? Maybe short and stocky. Muscular, perhaps. Maybe he had a buzz cut and sported a beard – I didn't know, but it was fun to imagine. Then sometimes I'd be overwhelmed by the memory of him, as silly as that sounds. Seven years is a long time, a long time to forget and move on, and it's not like we were married or anything – we were kids. But there are things that you remember and there are things you can't forget, and he was one of them. In a way I think he defined all my future relationships because I'd never really had a best friend after he was stolen from me; everyone else just seemed inferior in comparison. Sure, I made new friends and I enjoyed being with them, but when the night came and I was alone I would wander through my memories I would find him there, remembering how it felt when he held my hand and how much I missed that. And some nights I would imagine his arm around me again, moving me to silent tears because I knew he was never coming back. But time heals all wounds, so 'tis said, but even time leaves scars. Scars that stage themselves as occasional-yet-familiar pangs of loneliness, aching to fill the void he left behind.
