The last time I saw him, he intentionally, or unintentionally, left his journal at my house. Why he would bring it? I have no clue. I think he wanted to make "the process" easier for me. If he even left it on purpose. One day during our lunch, he told me that keeping a journal made time pass by slower. The first time I opened it and read one of the pages, it felt like one of the hands of the clock of the world had jammed and time had nearly ceased to exist at all. It's still too fresh for me to open it and read it. Somehow it feels like I'm back with him again. It sounds like a distant version of him is talking to me, but it's not him.
He never liked for us to make a big deal of his birthday. He said it was a cursed day. He tried to distance himself in any way he could and this was a way for him to do that. But this year it was different. He said it was his senior year and he wanted to go to the beach so we drove a state down to New Mexico. He came back with such a tan that hardly anyone recognized him. I think in his mind that was something good. His hair was glowing in the sunlight so much so that it almost blended in with it. So bright and golden and radiant. Sometimes I think so hard about it, that it's like I'm right there. Like I've gone back in time and am reliving it as if the future doesn't exist yet. As selfish as it is, I wish I could go back. It might've been impossible to hold him closer than I did that weekend, but if I could turn the clock back I'd find a way to do it.
I often wonder what would happen if I knew about the person he really was underneath. If I told him, how would he react? Would he be worried and push me away? Relieved that he wasn't alone in his own mind? Angry that I tried to sabotage him? Would he try to reassure me?
For him, everything's over. But for all of us it's no where close to being over. I can't believe this whole bullshit process he's forcing us to go through. He's still moving through our lives but he's not here. That first night alone, I laid in the complete darkness. And the night after that, and the one after that and it continued like that for days in end. A couple of weeks after the dust had somewhat settled, I wasn't sleeping and swore I saw him standing in the corner of my room. He walked towards me and got on his knees. He never looked up at me. I would just shut my eyes as tight as I could and hope that he went away. And when I opened them, he was gone. Like I said, I was wide awake, so there's no possibility this was sleep paralysis. I got blackout curtains so I saw nothing.
My bed still feels so empty without him. It's weird how you change when you are no longer with someone. There was a time you lived without them, but now it feels like there was never such thing.
I still have frequent dreams of him. Sometimes they repeat and sometimes they vary in the type of dream. Sometimes they're nightmares where he's ripped away from me like he was in my waking life. And sometimes they're dreams of us spending time alone in the sun just like he wanted. I miss him so much.
We spent most weekends jut watching movies. We both had a fetish for Quentin Tarantino movies. Our favorite to watch was Pulp Fiction. Never paid $5 for a milkshake after that.
