I feel empty, though in a way that lets me know it's over, I'm okay, and I'm standing in the light at the end of the tunnel.

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     It's hot in this living room. I feel my face becoming wet, salty, the fan turned where it cannot flap the pages of my book. I sigh as my notes fill another line, and lay my head back. The ceiling stares at me.
     I've tried to remember what your face looks like. It's difficult. I can remember individual parts: your eyes. That your nose was large (this blessed to me by Jimmie, who took one look at a picture I had and proclaimed I should never date someone with such a "huge schnozz"). Your lips were full. Your lips hurt the most to remember.
     I see the curve of your hip flowing into your full ass as you curled next to me on Jackie's couch. Not really next to me, you were far too full of frustration and anger for that. But it was a night we were speaking, and you had a sweatshirt on against the cold, and it had ridden up to expose a sliver of skin, and I wanted to make love to you right then, but I knew it was hopeless, for you were lost in your own world where you were drowning. Eventually you could breathe no longer and I was cast on a distant shore.
     A week ago I tried to remember what it was like to kiss you. It shocked me to know that the next time I kissed someone, it would feel different; it would be new. I vaguely remember the taste of your kisses (a whiff of a Camel brings back the taste, still raw, on your tongue, mixed with Miller and sunshine) but the feeling is no longer there. Not the long, passionate ones we exchanged, smiling afterwards, out of breath. Nor the short, sweet ones that I thought would continue forever, and then I told you to be safe and locked the door against the night.
     It's still hard to go through anything big, life-changing, and not think of you and your reaction. How you would be proud of my enthusiasm for college, happy for my joy over a potential job. I am thankful for what you did to me and my life. I've learned valuable lessons, and if we had stayed together, or even if I had stayed in my own place in my own city, I would have been behind a desk, greeting strangers and acting like I wasn't always thinking of you. Now I have a plan, a purpose.
     I cried to my mother, asking for the life I was promised back. The life with the lesbian power couple, the life with a cute house on Queen Anne and a dog in the backyard. The life of growing old and grey together, grandchildren running through our home. But that life, she told me, is no longer mine. That life was not the life I was meant to lead. I try to remember something I figured out late one night, looking at the big dipper and blowing smoke into its gourd: I am living the life God promised me. He has plans, and I am living them, and I will know later why I was sent in the midst of heartbreak to California to become a Registered Nurse and save someone's life.
     I have a fish who is wriggling in the pond beneath my feet in Washington. I have a fish that is nibbling my finger cautiously before retreating to the shadows in California. I have a large building I enter with books and paper in hand, and by the time I leave I feel as though all the knowledge I knew until this point has been pushed out in favor of what I just learned. But it piles on and builds itself. I have a coffee shop down the street where I know the manager by first name (and most of the cute female baristas, who are unfortunately married, but that never stopped anyone before). I have sent my application in and am waiting for a call.
     I don't wait for much anymore. I waited for two years for your call and apology; it came too late. I waited three months for a better life; we never made it. I waited to die after my heart cracked a third time; it healed instead.
     I need pills to sleep now, but as you need them too, I doubt you'll judge me much. I still take my anti-anxiety medication, but no more Xanax for me, not without you here, scaring me into submission and changing me at your whim and will. I tell everyone the truth and those who love it stay; those who don't leave, and I am better for it. I read voraciously, I text like crazy, I call my fish and best friend and talk until the sun has been gone for several hours. I am missed by those a continent away and those a half hour's drive.
     There are hours, good parts of days, where I do not think of you. There are 24-hour periods where you do not cross my mind. When you do cross, traipse through the footprints you have already laid, it does not always pain me. Sometimes it is good, remembering the sweet times we had, or thinking of the awful week that preceded my expulsion from all I knew and counting the blessings I've had since leaving. But other times, yes, it does hurt, thinking of your sweet sleepy eyes as you told me you loved me more than everything else, because I know it was not a lie, and that hurts the worst. Knowing that you loved me, and knowing I could do nothing to stop you ruining the beauty we fought so hard for.
     I do hope you are doing well. I hope you are not sick, and if you are, that you can visit a doctor. I hope you've had your wisdom teeth out and your abcess looked at, since I can no longer worry for you. I hope you're happy, or at least content. I hope you think of me sometimes, perhaps in the way I think of you, where it can hurt, but where it can also bring joy that is surprising in its coming. I hope you have started school or will soon. I hope you get your degree and accidentally email me an announcement when you send it to everyone on your email list. I hope that is the last contact I have from you and I can believe you are successful and living the life you always wished for.
     I hope you read this, and I hope you smile through the tears you are unable to spill.