This is arguably one of the most difficult writing assignments I have ever encountered: to write a non-fiction personal account of love, with a happy/positive ending.

Staring at the screen. Staring at the screen.

How can I be a writer if I can't write? It isn't that I lack things to say. I feel like I have so many things to say I could explode at times. Especially since I don't say them. Out Loud. In fact I probably say 5% of the things inside of me that I need to say Out Loud. I probably have too much to say I know I have too much to feel. So much that it all cancels itself out because it is overwhelming and then I feel nothing and say nothing and write nothing. This right now is nothing but actually it is something. When I feel nothing I feel something and that something is a weird blank sadness. A dull pain a little bit of sting behind my eyes like I could start to cry but I am hanging in there holding on. It is a nothing that feels frustrated and anxious and torn and goes a million miles a minute and then a full brain glaze over. My brain becomes a giant doughnut. A disgusting jelly doughnut. Which then reminds me of how fat I feel/am. Which is a distraction from the weird blank sadness.

What do you do when you feel you have loved your greatest love of your life and lost that love? When you think that is it for you. That was your Person and you lost your Person and now you have an entire life ahead of you without that Person. What do you do? When almost two years later you can sit in a public coffee shop on the most beautiful day in a most beautiful city, with time that is all yours but it feels as though the weight of this loss of this Person is crushing your chest. When you feel that the years left in your life stretch endlessly ahead of you and at any point the best you can be is 50% because you lost that other 50% which wasn't even 50%. That Person was 100%. When you literally think about that Person every 10 seconds and in that same moment you have to remind yourself that this person is--for all intents and purposes--dead. Your Person is dead. When you love your Person so much you would rather they actually be dead then out living in the world somewhere else loving someone else. When merely thinking their name, picturing their face, causes your heart to start pounding, causes such crippling anxiety that the only cure is drugging yourself into a deep sleep, drugging yourself into a deep drunk, drugging yourself into a deep fucking. And when you do all these things on repeat until your brain is a glazed doughnut again you are back to where you started. And you are back to the knowledge that your Person is dead but not really.

My Person. My Person. She was not perfect. But I liked her and loved her and hated her and loathed her and liked her and loved her just the way she was and is and was. I loved her skin. I loved her weird knobby knees. I loved her eyes that held a million secrets and her strong hands and her hard heart. I loved her throat. I loved her voice and her laugh which was more of a series of sharp shouts. I loved her stupid mind. I don't know anymore if she, my Person, loved me. Really loved me. I try not to think about it. I try to remind myself that the Person she was and is and was is gone. Is dead.

And then what? And then what?

And then you feel angry for a tiny little bit because you think of all the broken promises. You think of all the things that were supposed to be a certain way but are not that way and you think about all the things that were supposed to be right now and they aren't right now and won't be ever. And then you don't just have the weight on your chest, or the fluttering in your heartbeat, or the stinging behind your eyes, or the glazed doughnut in your brain. You have them all at once in concert and you think you are going to throw up and cry and scream in concert. And you feel like nothing is right. And all you want is to hear your Person's voice. For 60 seconds. On the phone. That wouldn't be enough but that would be enough. And you feel as these feelings and things all of it in a flash every few seconds, minutes, hours, every day. And you can have all of these things these feelings sitting in a public coffee shop on the most beautiful day in a most beautiful city, with time that is all yours. When I feel nothing I feel something and that something is a weird blank sadness.

Staring at the screen. Staring at the screen.

What is the happy ending? How can I make this positive?

What do you do when you feel you have loved your greatest love of your life and have lost that love? When you think that is it for you? That was your Person and you lost your Person and now you have an entire life ahead of you without that Person. What do you do? What is your Happy Ending? Here is your Happy Ending. You have loved. You have loved a great love. You know love. You know real big crush crush crushing fucking love. You know pain. You know exquisite, overwhelming out of this world love and pain.

I would do it all over again even to know a single moment of that love and this pain.

Anna