It’s been six years. Every day, I add one token to the bank of days it has been. After all, one day at a time is a common cliché.

When I do manage to fall asleep, most of my dreams that I remember follow a similar pattern. I’m standing on the edge of a tall place, feeling like I’m about to fall (I’m afraid of heights.) I’m looking for my classroom, lost in what seems like a maze of buildings. Sometimes the school is circular, and it feels like I’m going around for ages, until I finally find what I’m looking for. I’m trying to remember the combination for my locker. I’m trying to find my way through a house with endless rooms: no matter how many stairs I climb, no matter how many doors I go through, there is always more.

But sometimes, even six years after the end, he interrupts the comfortable chaos of my normal nightmares. I dream of him, the great and terrible what-if, the one that got away. Sometimes, days or weeks or months go by with no dreams of him, and it gives my heart and soul a blissful break. My dreams of him are almost always lucid: I’m aware that I’m dreaming while I’m with him, and I know it’s not real. Last night, he tried to tell me this time, it’s real. In the depth of my subconscious, I kept thinking: don’t wake up, don’t wake up, he’s here, don’t wake up.

This is the product of my deepest desire, the subject of my most personal wish that I don’t tell anyone. It only comes true when I’m asleep. My wakeful mind reminds me that it’s over, it’s been over for a long time, fucking move on already. Why can’t this last piece hiding in my subconscious let go, let go once and for all?

Maybe it’s because he’s the one who stole my heart, my hope.