PERIPHERY | NH |

FORTY

Hunter

Three months later...

Boxes.

An entire life, packed up in brown cardboard.

When you live your life, there are pieces of you that manage to get strewn around and scattered across the places you touch.

A baseball cap here.

Two glasses from a summer vacation there.

Sometimes, you even leave behind the smallest memories, like a pair of cufflinks that always stayed in the tiny seashell dish on the dresser.

Each of these things carry memories of your own but also tie themselves in with someone else's — memories that spark up emotions that have been kept tied down for years and years.

However, when you're gone?

They all pack up into neat, brown boxes sealed with clear packing tape. Each one individually labeled, stacked into a storage unit and left.

Right now, I'm looking at the boxes and the memories of the man who raised me.

Waiting for me to face the fears I've pushed behind me for so long that it seemed like if I just never confronted them, maybe they would go away all on their own.

When my dad died all those years ago, I never went through his things after I said goodbye. Instead, I compartmentalized my emotions and put them into an organized room, claiming that I was busy and that I would handle it when I handled it.

Easy enough.

Over the last three months, I've spent crying tears I didn't know I had and mourning the loss of the relationship that cradled my insecurities and the relationship that pushed me towards the achievements I deserved, I've had nothing but time.

Seeing Niall on my front porch in the rain was heartbreaking. To send the man that I know is the only person for me away?

It hurt.

God... It hurt so fucking bad.

I'm pretty sure I spent three days in bed and Cooper had to use his emergency key just to make sure I drank water and ate something. Anything.

The fall of what we created together with our lives was unlike anything I had ever experienced. Seeing how two people so in love with each other can turn into strangers, people who don't even know how to comfort and lean on each other anymore, was a shock to my system.

No matter what either of us did, we couldn't be there the way we needed each other.

It tore me apart, but I made it out.

We both did.

That's not to say that it was fun or exciting, no.

Tearing yourself apart to give the other person you care about what they need is hard. It's almost impossible. You want what is best for each other and when you realize that it isn't you anymore... All you want to do is dig your heels into the fresh dirt and hold on for dear life.

The only problem is that there is only so much holding on you can do before your muscles give out, pulling away and leaving you face down on the floor.

Months have passed since I've seen Niall but that doesn't mean he isn't everywhere that I go.

A box much like the ones I've been sifting through, sits in my living room filled with things of his.

A couple of golf balls that were under my couch.

A bottle of his cologne that sat on my bathroom counter for a month before I couldn't look at it anymore.