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It's winter, you know.
It's been almost a year.
I'm sitting in that field, you know, the one where you first told me you loved me.
The stars are out, just like they were then.
The sky looks so big.
I didn't say I love you back. I was scared.
Scared to open myself up like that, to let you see inside. I didn't like being so vulnerable. I still don't.
Even now, with all the distance, the thought of being so open, so exposed, scares me. Especially when it comes to you. You always did that to me.
You made me feel like I was special, like I was more than just one of the crowd, not by any particular attribute of mine, but just by dint of being me. It was... exhilarating. It still is.
I miss being able to talk to you, face to face. I always could, even when we were mad at each other, even when the whole world was against us. You always understood.
My friends don't understand why I can't get over you. They just look at me and wonder why it matters so much. They were nice, and comforting, those first few weeks, but as the weeks turned into months, and the months into a year, they didn't understand why I was still so distant. I guess they never will.
They didn’t understand that it wasn’t that you were my one great love, and now you were gone, all though that was part of it, at first. It was more like you were my color, the one thing in my life that made the world seem brighter, stupid as it sounds. When you were gone, my world was so…bleak. Like nothing mattered any more. But…that wasn’t all of it either. Now, it’s that I miss the little things.
Things like waking up to a cold bed because you’d gotten up before dawn to cook breakfast for me before I left for work.
That one time that you left a trail of flowers to the bed, and then when I followed them into the bedroom, expecting to see you laid out like a gift, you kidnapped me and took me to a surprise birthday party at the pub.
When you first admitted that maybe you liked me, just a little.
When I first said it back.
It’s things like that, that made me pull away from my friends, and their false sympathies. They never liked you, never understood why I was with you, so why should I believe that they were sorry you were gone?
I can hear you laughing at me for being so melodramatic. You always thought I was a drama queen, and I never disagreed with you. You could have histrionics, yourself, when the mood took you.
Even though it’s been a year, I still can’t believe it. I still can’t believe that you’re gone. It hurts, sometimes, when I wake up in the morning, and I wonder why you’re not in bed with me. Or I smell your scent on the breeze, and spend thirty minutes crying in the bathroom because for just a second, I thought that it was you trying to sneak up behind me, again.
I miss you so much.
The night is getting cold, now. The wind is picking up. It’s making the long grasses rustle against each other, sounding eerily like human voices, murmuring just at the edge of my hearing. The weather report said that we were supposed to be getting a few inches of snow sometime in the next few days. I can’t feel the cold, not really. I think my teeth are chattering, but I can’t be sure.
Remember when we were first dating? When we were so awkward around each other, afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing, of scaring each other off? We both wanted this to work so badly.
Ha. Remember that one date, our second, or third, where somehow you had gotten reservations at that ridiculously fancy place, but hadn’t told me? And I arrived in jeans and a t-shirt, expecting to be going to a pub. I don’t know how much you paid the staff to let me in. I stuck out like a sore thumb covered in neon polka-dots. The server lit the candle in the middle of the table, and not halfway into the meal, I managed to knock it over, into the wine, which promptly spilled on your white silk shirt. I was so embarrassed. You told me it didn’t matter, that all I had done was ensure that we had something to laugh about in our old age. It was the first time we had brought up us having a lasting relationship.
I think the temperature has dropped another few degrees. They’ll be looking for me now. I didn’t leave anything behind that could tell where I was going, so I should be safe for another few hours. That should be long enough.
I hear a coyote howl a few miles away. It’s impossibly quiet out here, in the middle of nowhere. I’ve never heard silence be so loud. It’s so peaceful, and still. The only movement is the whisper of the grass, and the trees surrounding the field, and the frosting of my breath as I exhale. It’s… relaxing. I feel free as I haven’t in a very long time. Unfettered by the cruel ways of the world. Who knew that all I needed to find inner peace was to come out here.
Now I know that it’s getting below freezing, because even the breath that I blow out through my nose is frosting. I still can’t feel it, though. I lie back on the cold grass and look back up at the sky. It fills my whole vision, for the moment encompassing the whole world. It’s so big. I finally feel ready to tell you. To take that one last step that I never got the chance to. I’m so tired, though. Tired of well-meaning friends trying to understand why I can’t just move on, tired of waking up in the middle of the night with a nightmare, and not having someone there who just knows. Tired of fending off people who are just trying to feed off me, trying to get a little bit of the spotlight that always seems to be on me. They can have it. I never asked for it. I’m just…tired. The cold isn’t helping. I think I’ll tell you now, before my brain becomes too fuzzy to say it.
I love you.