Dear Ocean,
As you've consumed my last three letters I thought it'd be fitting to just address them to you.
I'm healing. Time is the only thing that can heal me. So fucking cliche. I guess that's for a reason. Chaol still pops into my head. I don't get better. I do great and then I do terrible. I go a day without him popping to my mind then I go two minutes.
The worst part is the dreams. Every night. Chao visits me in my dreams. I wake up to the sound of waves crashing against the side of the boat and I know nothing is wrong. And then it sets in. A deep sort of physical panic. My body freezes as my mind races through the memory of the last dream. He's kissing me, he's holding me, he loves me. He's gone. You left. Then it gets hard to breathe, it gets hard to swallow. I think of anything but the dream, anything but him. It never works.
If only I'd...
If only she'd...
If one he'd...
I rerun through every horrible thing I've done. I convince myself that I could have saved what we had. Terror runs through my blood. A constant companion to the adrenaline. I have to remind myself... It's not your falt.
I'm the one careening out of control. Because sometimes you see yourself- you see yourself the way you could be- the way you might be if things were different. And if you look too closely, what you see will scare you, it'll make you wonder what you might do if given the opportunity. You know there's a different side of yourself you don't want to recognize, a side you don't want to see in the daylight. You spend your whole life doing everything to push it down and away, out of sight, out of mind. You pretend that a piece of yourself doesn't exist. You live like that for a long time. For a long time, you're safe. And then you're not. (Tahereh Mafi, Shatter me)