I knew what was gonna happen and I did it anyway. I’m happy that I did. She looked so beautiful, and it’s clear that the life she emits has only grown. I am so happy for her. It’s strange to be so happy for someone that has torn me apart in a thousand ways for the last five years. She hasn’t actually done anything, to be clear, but not doing anything is its own type of action.  I will never be able to come to terms with the fact that our story has ended this way. Silence one on end, desperate pleas into the void from the other. To this day I have not known anything like what that was.  The memories have less acute impact now, but the sense of loss is still somehow so strong. The music doesn’t make me feel much anymore, but I can still get lost.  It’s probably true to say that I think about her everyday, but maybe only for a brief fraction of a second. Her name crosses my mind often, but that’s really it.  When I’m doing well and things are moving in the direction of God, I dream of her incessantly. I cannot help it. If I am opening my heart, so to am I opening it to the pain of loss.  There is only so much that I can do on my own. I have lived so many lives since then. I have fallen in love with another person, I have moved to the mountains alone, I have pursued beauty in art, I have tried desperately to recreate her in the aggregate.  I worry that in having done so, I have become bitter and manipulative in a particularly evil way, forming the people and the spirits of my life to fit the shape of her memory.  None of this was conscious, at least not most of the time. Sometimes it was and I continued anyway. I always had a penchant for drama but only after her did it become externalized in situations with others. It was a particularly insular brand of hyperbolic living before her, and then the desire burst out of me and began entangling those around me.  Where once magic lived in my heart is now a mess of thorny vines protecting the last few remaining drops of mysticism that I fear are only going to evaporate.  I never pictured her wearing blue, but I am certain I will for the next little while.