You Probably Don't Know Who You Are

I still think about you now, even though you're gone. No, that makes it sound like you're dead. And you're not dead, you're just away, living some other life that I am no longer a part of. I felt guilty, because I hadn't thought about you for a long time, and then I remembered everything.

And the remembering stung. Like when you get lemon juice in your eye, only this time, it was my heart. 

At first, I thought about you everyday. Then I thought about you every week. That drained down to one or two times a month, and then I stopped. I think I stopped because I couldn't take it. All those times I thought of you, I prayed for you. Then that stopped too. I know. I'm lame. But it was hard for me, because I'd keep praying the same thing over and over, and I didn't see you, so I didn't even know if anything was changing.

I wanted everything to change for you. Or go back to the way it used to be, I guess. I wanted to tell you in person that I thought you were brave, that I knew all of this was hard for you. Mostly, I wanted you to talk to me about it. I think that was what was difficult for me. You never wanted to talk to me about it. You never said anything. But I knew. I knew too late, that's all. Because by the time I put all the clues together, by the time I had it figured out, you were gone. Or I was gone, depending on how you looked at things.

But I want you to know that I am thinking about you again. Sometimes I want to be like The Giver, you know? And take all those memories from everybody. But then I know I'd be bad at it, because what I do have is overwhelming. That's why I stopped thinking about you. I should probably read that book again. I read it in seventh grade, and a lot of it didn't make sense. But when did anything ever make sense in seventh grade?

Just like how I prayed for you all those times and never found out if anything ever changed for you, I won't know if you read this or not. In fact, I'm probably counting on "or not." But I guess that's okay. The important thing is that I'm remembering.