You know, I'm past certain things. But I still have moments, that sometimes last for the better part of the day, in which I'm aware of a phantom pain in a phantom limb. Absence is a presence all its own.

About a year ago, when I was in the thick of my own personal grief--when it was impossibly fresh--I had an epiphany: There would come a time when I would not be in that raw place of mourning, when I would care less than I could imagine possible, for this person, the hopes I attached to him, and the sadness of that leveled me more than my feral sorrow over dashed dreams and urequited love.

More often than not, now, I'm aware that this point of true detachment looms ahead. And I am not of the mindset that I should avoid or delay it in any way, but...

it is still crazy to me that after all of everything.... 'everything' simply being the friendship, the parts of it that were pure and good (and I can still see such parts of it, though they are elusive and shift in certain kinds of light.), that he is among the names and faces of men I no longer wish to know.