Forever…

I'm going to miss you forever. Do you know that?

I will spend the rest of my life missing you.

In big ways. In small ways. In all the ways in between.

Because there aren't many things that last forever, but missing someone does.

Even the people we shouldn't miss. The people we don't want to miss. The people who perhaps don't deserve to be missed.

Still, we do.

The feeling slips in quietly, like a robber on tiptoes. One moment everything feels normal. The next, it is there beside you, and there isnothing you can do about it.

And that is both beautiful and awful.

Beautiful because it means I will never truly forget you, even when the spaces between remembering grow longer.

Awful because the only reason we miss people is that they are gone.

Sometimes I'll know exactly what I'm doing. I'll feel the missing of you as clearly as a hand pressed against my chest.

Other times, it will arrive as nothing more than an ache.

An emptiness.

A small wound I can't quite place.

I'll pause and wonder what hurts, and where it came from. Then my heart will understand before my mind does.

It is you.

My body will learn the difference between the sting of a cut on my hand and the grief of your absence.

Then I'll remember.

And I'll miss you all over again.

Not every day.

Not in great, dramatic waves.

But in little pieces.

In quiet moments.

In ordinary afternoons.

For all my days, until the end of time.

And somehow, I find both peace and pain in that.

Because loving you means I will miss you forever.

And missing you forever means you will never truly be gone.

Author: Unknown (adapted)