If you’re reading this it’s been three months. Surprisingly life has a way of continuing. I haven’t  found it as hard to trudge on without the constant of you as I thought I would have. Somehow, you  still manage to seep into the everyday, and I don’t know I believe that will ever change.  I’ve tried to be good, to find a new rhythm. Flirting with the idea of setting down roots, viewing  properties for sale and changing jobs. The summer has been hot here and the humidity has been  inescapable and relentless. Missing you feels the same, it hangs heavy in the air. Your absence is  like sweat that clings to my skin all day.  

We spoke about building a house on a hill, do you remember that? I viewed a house for sale and it  was everything I wanted for us. Driving back from the viewing I imagined the conversation we’d be  having about it. You’d roll your eyes when I would tease you about living together and remind me  you don’t live in if-land. What a privilege to be able to resist it! I thought you always seemed so  remarkably capable of practicing your own advice. I haven’t yet learned to do the same. Each day I  check the post for a letter that you won’t write, I refresh my emails and search for your name in my  inbox. I view houses and hear the questions you’d ask about what sits behind the walls.  

More with each passing day I find myself wondering what you’re doing at any given moment. I  watched the eclipse on a field that stretched high over the countryside. I was careful not to burn my  eyes looking at the sun, and as I looked into my homemade pinhole camera, made from a Bran  Flakes cereal box, I wondered if you were able to get a pair of eclipse glasses and had a better view.  Or maybe, I considered, there may have been cloud cover where you were and so you may have  seen nothing at all. You could have already crossed to the other side of the world and I’d not have  known.  

Your family occupy my thoughts too. I got used to hearing about their lives in small ways,  disagreements with neighbours and how the family business was doing. I wonder what the summer  had in store for them. Perhaps even you’ve met someone new, I don’t follow that thought. Instead I check your local news site each day, looking for something like a sign that things are ok where you  are. If I saw that it wasn’t I would be powerless to do anything. It’s almost become a morbid  curiosity.  

Sometimes a day or so goes by when I don’t think of you. I can carry on with work, catch up with  friends and almost feel normal. I’m reading the sequel to a book I read with you, and found I can be  engrossed in the pages without thinking of the time I was reading about those characters led on your  lap. But the memory of you always returns to me. Like part of me has no interest in becoming  indifferent to you. I almost feel like, when I die, at a postmortem, they’d cut me open and find you  there. On the inside of my organs.  

I don’t want life to be defined by your absence. It would be a betrayal to not try and make the most  of living. The problem is, my body doesn’t just carry memories, it experiences you. I carry you in  the sound of my laugher. And I don’t yet know if I feel bitter about that. If I am right to believe it  unfair. That you spoke about ‘what ifs’ like they were a choice that you could simply disregard.  Possibilities that defined my life and still continue to although the outcome is indisputable.  

My body carries every choice, made or not. I am still living in a body that belongs to you. Three  months may not seem like a long time, and when compared with a lifetime I know it is short. But I  still depend on you to feel, you are at the root of everything somehow. I laugh and you are  underneath the sound, I cry and the tears are for you, I exercise how you taught me to, I feel  pleasure that is yours. Three months of that is exhausting. Maybe in time I won’t notice it anymore.  But I don’t know whether you took any responsibility for the weigh of it, or whether you ever  properly understood it. And when you exited our life, you left me with nothing but mythology.  

So you could decide I am angry about how things were left, but it’s not as simple as that. I wish I  could sit here and say that I don’t give a fuck how you are. But I do. I wish that I didn’t wonder  whether you’ve thought about messaging me. Or if you’ve written me letters you’ll never send.  These thoughts are a part of my new rhythm, and I’ve made my peace with that. When I went travelling, I looked over the Caucasus mountains and felt you there. And I was glad to. You were in  the wind.