Moving on is an elusive thing. How do you know if you are doing it right? I know after years, the pain is supposed to dull enough to clarify your thoughts enough to regain a newfound hope for a future.
And sometimes I think I'm getting there; when I'm sitting with Christina, reminiscing over our times we spent with her, how our relationships grew to form such an unbreakable thing that even death can't seem to maim.
But then there are times at night, when I wake from a particularly bad dream, of whips and explosions and I turn and expect to find comfort in her warmth lying next to me, before it takes me a moment to realize it's not there.
That it hasn't been there for a long time.
It's like taking an old scar and carving in a new one, simply in that instant; the small truth I've lived with for months. Years; having the ability to reawaken the pain.
It'll be a while I can go without having those moments. There are times when I think they've gone for good, but then Christina will say something and I'll flick my gaze to the seat beside me and expect her to be there, laughing at the joke.
But no, it's always just a vacant chair instead, bearing a memory of something that used to be.
I once thought that perhaps it was just me, but I see it in Christina, too. I'll catch a smile on her lips when she looks somewhere, before something dawns in her eyes that causes her to drop her stare and lose the smile.
So maybe it never truly goes away. Maybe our hearts can never truly mend.
But perhaps that's okay. Scars are history. They are proof of events that happened. They remind us of things we might otherwise have chosen to forget.
I almost lost them one time and it always brings a horrible taste to my mouth at the prospect of what I'd almost chosen to give up willingly.
I know now though, that I never want to forget; that the pain was worth it. It was worth knowing her.
And I'd do it all again.
Perhaps that is it. Moving on, realizing that out of what you lost, you gained something that you still wouldn't trade or rebuke.
And I know I did. Because after knowing Tris, after loving her, I became something else.
I became someone I have come to respect.
Because of her, I became better.