Hello,

It's been a year since I've last seen you. It's been a year since we last spoke. It's weird that I've grown accustomed to life without you, when, just 12 months ago, you meant everything to me. You were my rock, my soul, and I would have never thought that I could live without you. But here we are, living completely different lives in completely different worlds, and I'm OK with that.

I fell in love with you before our first kiss, way back in high school, when I could turn to you for advice about boys and grades. I could stroll into your house with ease and comfort, tan on your deck in the middle of the summer, and laugh and toss around a soccer ball across your backyard. Our friendship developed into secret kisses and late night school nights together during our senior year, gradually leading to listening to your heart beat as I laid my head on your chest, drifting into a nap. We grew inseparable, surviving the distance when college drove us apart. Yes, there were fights and arguments that neither one of us ever won, but they were long forgotten in our busy lives. The breaks were filled with movie nights and sleepovers, your parents asking me what I wanted for breakfast in the morning. I thought that I'd never lose you. You were my other half.

Then you left. It was sudden and unexpected. You became a ghost, blocking me out of every aspect of your life, leaving me with nothing but the memory of you. There was no reason, no downfall that led to your disappearance. I had no contact with you and I couldn't gather the energy to try again. My days were spent in bed, watching sitcoms and sobbing between shows. Yours were filled with nameless girls who you woke up next to, partying forward without looking back at the damage that you caused.

It took me a while to take a step forward, always stumbling three steps back as you continued to ruin me, my name always on your lips. You made me believe that I was worth nothing but a stepping-stone. Your voice echoed in my head every morning when I woke up and every night before I fell asleep. But, as time went on, I came across the rumors that you spread, the ones about me that you claimed to be true. Your desire to hurt me was sickening and the thought of you made my stomach churn. My hate for you slowly crept into my mind. It filled the holes in my heart with disgust so deep that I still can't think of your face without a brutal sense of anger.

However, despite your best efforts, I picked up the pieces of myself that you shattered and glued them back together. I moved on more and more each day. I went through new experiences and other secret kisses from different boys who I used to erase you from my mind. I began to see my future again, except your presence was cut out completely. A faceless figure was standing in your place. You were no longer anything but a mending scar, pink with freshness, stitches laced within.

Now, 12 months later, I drove past your house for the first time since you left me. I didn't stop. I sped right past your life and back into mine. During those ten seconds, though, I glanced at the porch stairs that you used to kiss me against and let myself wonder what it would be like if things had played out differently, any other way. Would I let myself fall for a boy rather than run away from the mere thought of attachment? Would I still be nervous about letting anyone get close to me out of fear that they would just leave, just like you did? Then the stop sign came and reality reminded me that if you play with stitches, they could rip, so I kept driving and never looked back.