Drifting Away, I Know

It's a nice feeling when someone wants to hold onto you. I'm sure we've all had that experience of wanting someone close to you, and in your life so badly that you end up clinging to them too tightly, so tightly that they feel suffocated. I wonder if that whole experience could be avoided if they too held on--onto you. Maybe we feel the need to cling tighter when we feel like we are being let go, and deep inside a tingling panic starts to take control of what we do. Suddenly everything focuses in on that one person, and how they are slowly slipping away. They don't answer your texts, don't return your phone calls, pretend like they don't see you in the grocery store, and then one day you wake up to realize that they're not even around anymore--they've moved away, moved on with their life, forgotten you. And you feel ashamed for clinging, but yet a sickening sadness clings to your heart and your bones and your heartbeats. A heavy sheen of sadness clings to the tears forming in the corners of your eyes, and you suddenly develop allergies when your family asks why your nose is dripping so much that you have to carry tissues. The days drag on and on, seemingly with no purpose and no plan, and you feel like you're not going anywhere. Stuck in a one-horse town, seeing the same faces every day, and it grows so old that you wish you could die in your sleep. When night comes, it's all you can do to stay in your bed; instead you feel like pacing the length of this empty house or jogging down the street at 3am until you break a sweat in the February air. All at once everything that you see reminds you of them--the steaming cup of tea on the counter, the cute couple holding hands in the grocery store, the park full of green grass that you laid in together and shared dreams--even the way you pull your chapstick out of your pocket, even the way the breeze brushes your cheek like his fingers used to do. Tomorrow turns into today, and today turns into yesterday; yesterday into last week, and last week into last month; every hour the agony fades so imperceptibly until one night, you realize that agony has been replaced with sadness, and sadness with apathy, and apathy with regret. Regret turns into bitterness, but the bitter taste in your mouth will slowly wear away, just like the taste of his kiss did, just like the memory of his arms faded from your dreams. Maybe, in the end, time doesn't heal old wounds, but rather covers them with a layer of sadness, just so that your heart won't beat all of its life-blood out of your veins onto the concrete. It may not waste all your blood, but in the end, it still stains the ground, and you are still left weaker than you ever were before.