Missing Him
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I've lived in my apartment for just under three years now, and I haven't known it without John. He was in my life the day I got the keys, and sat with me that same night in the dark, empty space talking about how we were going to 'grow here together'.
We were right.
I just never knew that growth would mean we'd inevitably grow apart.
So here we are. He left, and not only am I missing him, but the apartment - in various spots - is missing him, like, his things and what has been there of his for years now. The bedside table (that he bought us) used to house the digital clock that woke him/us up every morning, but is now a blank surface. I still glance over to check the time, and am met with nothing no longer there, and it feels like it's mocking me.
His printer: gone, an outline of dust where it used to sit. The whole end of my long dining table, cleared off and empty. His two shelves of the medicine cabinet, unoccupied. The towel he'd hang over the shower door to dry, that would smack me in the face and block the light - missing.
Nothing no longer there, gone, empty, unoccupied, missing -- sheesh! Descriptive much?
One of my haiku poems I wrote for The 100 Day Project early this year was entitled closed down, abandoned and it was in reference to a boarded up, abandoned gas station I spotted out the passenger side window. As my sister drove passed, I immediately identified with it. I felt my head twist back to keep it in view a little longer, and thought (almost outloud), "I know how you feel."
That's what missing him has felt like.
We both decided he should leave, even though we both didn't want him to go. There's a palpable longing there...for the love & vibrancy between us that once filled up the four walls of my apartment, that for months we couldn't place - that no amount of working on or fighting for or putting on the back of milk cartons could uncover again.
With his things gone, the apartment is very much missing pieces of him that I still look for. I am missing him, and his touch and his sounds and his smell. And I'm also missing what we used to be, that unravelled without us realizing until it was too late.
