Her...

The last thing I want to do is to fall asleep thinking about her. That’ll mean dreaming about her and keeping the hurt going that much longer.

We met during one of my failed attempts at college. I still feel the anxiety and excitement I felt the moment she sat next to me the first day of our Biology class. The awe I felt when I looked into her eyes for the first time and she smiled at me. It still makes me smile myself.

Class ends and we both stand up. She lightly touches my arm and asks me if I could point her to her next class. Ah, what luck! It’s in the same building as my own. Just a few rooms down. I offer to walk her there and she accepts. My heart doubles in speed and my mind screams in victory as we go on our way.

She and I hit it off big time on that walk and it became a daily occurrence. Eventually, we would start meeting after our next class and walking to our cars together. Then, seeing more and more of each other outside of school. It didn’t take long before we were in love. Almost inseparable.

Fast forward to near the end of the semester. We’re studying for finals at her place. Things were still wonderful between us but that night she just seemed…different. Like her mind was somewhere else. She would just look at me. Not with the love I always saw in them. There was sadness in them. She claimed nothing was wrong but my attempts to get her focused on our studies just took us in circles. So, I gave up and tried to talk to her about it but she couldn’t explain why she was feeling that way.

As I got up to leave, she displayed the most excitement I saw from her all night. She leapt from her chair and threw her arms around me, squeezing me tighter than ever before. She was halfway to hysteria, begging me not to leave. I held her and said I had to, but I’d see her in class the next day. When she accepted that, she kissed me, then looked in to my eyes and tearing up, she said I love you. It broke my heart having to leave her that night, not knowing what was wrong. I held her a bit longer, kissed her lightly on the forehead and said I love you, too.

The next morning, she wasn’t in class. I always got a call or text when she wouldn’t be there so, immediately after, I called her cell. No answer. I tried again right before my next class. Same. I finally got a call while walking to my car. It was from her mother. She was in a car accident on her way to school. She was gone.

I've tried not to think about her. Day in, day out... trying to erase the memory from my head. It would not. A part of me wanted to hold on to what was left of her: the memories. Memories that were beginning to feel like a dream, a dream that maybe everything was just an illusion... but something still made me hold on to them.

Its been almost a year, and here I lie, attempting to sleep without dreaming her. Without having to awake with the pain of not having her. I know it is an impossible task. She will always be the first thing I think of in the morning and the last thing I think of at night. How could I ever expect to move on, when she won’t stop staring at me from the foot of the bed.