You told me you wanted me to choke on my last words to you. I took this in a figurative sense at the time but am now finally realizing you meant it in the most literal of ways. Figuratively choking, missing you that felt like the rain or replaying that sentence a million times over in my head, that would have been bearable. I prepared for that from day one. What I didn't prepare for was literally choking on my own tongue every time I'm asked if I've ever been in love. I wasn't prepared for the nights spent wrapped in every persons bedsheets except for my own and still somehow always waking up in our living room. I wasn't prepared for my next lover to find page after page filled with nothing but a list of my sick coping mechanisms written the day you left and being asked for an explanation. To stand in the middle of an emergency room halfheartedly clawing at my own throat, part of me wanting the words to fall out, part of me wanting them to be stuck in the same lump forever. I was not prepared to start shopping for plane tickets at three in the afternoon on my way to meet someone for a date and replaying the scenarios of how I might find you over again in my head. I am not prepared to follow through with plans of going to every half price book store in the state of Texas on the off chance you'll be there, but I know I'm inevitably going to do so anyways. You told me you wanted me to choke on my last words to you. And trust me I am. But not because they weren't true; my last words were pleas begging you to understand I wasn't the only one causing this to end and you weren't the only one hurting. I'm choking because I can't figure out how to yell them loud enough for you to finally hear again. For you to acknowledge me and give me some form of closure rather than just a handful of nails to hammer into my own coffin. I can't breathe when I tell him I love him, and he can't breathe when I accidentally call him by your name instead of his own. I'm choking. Just not in the way that you originally intended. C.a.l