Reading over the words on the pages in front of me, I smiled slightly.
Did I really write this? I mean, it was my writing. My words. But they seemed foreign to me now.
I knew why I had written them, and in a way I still believed them to some degree. You never really get over your first true love, right?
Turning the page, I scanned the words written out before me.
Now I know why I had hidden this at the bottom of a box in my closet. God, just reading it made me emotional.
JC had been the one to suggest I write in a journal. He said it would help me sort through my feelings and emotions after the breakup. He even said that months from then I would look back at it and laugh.
Well, I wasn't laughing. But I wasn't crying, either.
It really had been the hardest thing I had ever had to do. Leaving everything I had known, the life I had built with him behind was something I never thought I would have to go through. And when it actually happened, I never thought I would live through it.
But I did. I carried on, picked up the pieces of my broken hard and shattered soul, and carried on.
I had no choice.
My eyes fell to a small section of writing at the bottom of the page. Gliding my eyes over the entry, I remembered that day clearly.
It had been about two weeks after I had moved out. They guys were heading back out on tour in two days, and Justin had come over to visit me and see my new apartment before leaving.
He had been wonderful that day. Not that he wasn't always wonderful, but he had been especially so that day. He knew just how hard I was taking all this, and did whatever it took to make me smile.
Even if what it took was for him to flash me his bare butt.
I laughed as I thought of the look of shock that was surely on my face when he pulled his pants down and shook his butt at me. It had been the very last thing I had expected him to do. But he had promised he would go to any extreme to make me smile, and he never broke a promise.
I read over the words on the page, and immediately noticed the difference in them from those on the previous pages.
They were still sad, full of confusion and loss. But there was also that tiny mention of Justins crazy act, and a sentence that didnt mention Lance. A sentence that proved that I was slowly letting go.
Flipping through more pages, I came across another day a few weeks later that I remembered just as clearly. Just another quick little mention of the phone conversation, and a seemingly meaningless statement that would forever be engraved in my memory.
Joey had called me to check in one night from his hotel room in Atlanta. They had just done a concert, and he was obviously hyper and needed someone to talk to. I hadn't been able to sleep, so when he called I was more than happy to chat.
We talked about everything. How the tour had been going. What I had been up to. Even what pranks Chris had been pulling on JC.
Everything except Lance.
Joey knew I wanted to know how he was, but didn't bring it up. I wasn't about to ask, because I knew it wouldn't make any different in the long run if he was sulking or not. It wasn't going to change the fact that it was over.
We had stopped talking for a moment, experiencing the first awkward silence I had ever had with Joey. Finally, I blurted words out that I didn't even know I had been thinking.
"Joe?"
"Hmm?"
"When will I be over him?" My voice was so quiet I wasn't sure he had heard me. But there was no way I was going to repeat it. I almost smacked myself in the head for saying it the first freaking time.
There was another long silence before he answered. Sighing lightly, he whispered back. "Soon."
I remembered my confused face. What did he mean by soon? What kind of answer was that?
"What do you mean, soon?" I asked, flipping over in my bed to lay on my other side. I pressed the phone closer to my ear, waiting to hear his answer.
I remember it was raining that night. No thunder or lightening, just a soft, gentle, cleansing rain that beat lightly on my window.
"I mean soon." he replied. "Soon, you will cry your last tear. You will think about him less and less every day, until one day you wont think of him at all." He paused for a moment before whispering again. "Soon."
I didn't believe him. How could I actually go through an entire day without thinking of him? That just wasn't plausible to me back then.
He took up my every waking thought, and every dream. And here Joey was telling me that one night he wouldn't be in my dreams, and I would make it through the entire night without a thought of him?
Whatever.
As soon as the night turned to day. When the winter turned to summer, and the oceans turned to sand.
That's how soon I would be over Lance.
"It will happen, you know." Joeys soft voice called through the phone again, and I remembered that I was still talking to him.
"I'm not so sure, Joey." I felt myself begin to tear up, but fought to keep control.
"I am." he replied confidently.
I was a little shocked at his certainty. Wasn't this his best friend we were talking about? I mean, he was supposed to be on his side, not on the phone comforting me.
But I was thankful that he was.
I thought over what Joey had said a few more times.
"Soon all the hurt will end, right?" I said softly. "Even if I dont feel that way now?"
"Mmhmm."
"But until then, Ill just pretend that Ill be over him soon. Until I feel it myself, Ill just pretend and tell myself that I am."
Joey laughed a little at my logic. Only I could come up with something like that. Telling myself I am over him, when I know I'm not, just so I can bare the reality of having to wait to be over him.
I was in need of serious psychiatric help.
We chatted for a few moments longer, before he had to go to sleep. They had to leave for the next city early the next morning, and was already going to be exhausted.
I thanked him for taking the time to talk to me, even if he was the one who had called.
For months after that, his words had played in my mind.
Soon, I would be over him. I would think of him less and less, until one day I didn't think of him at all.
I thought it was completely impossible for me to actually do that.
Until the day I looked up at the clock at quarter to midnight, and realized that Joey was right. I hadn't thought of Lance all day.
I flipped ahead to that entry. To when I realized I had not thought of him all day.
As my eyes scanned the words, I laughed out loud. I was so amazed at the fact that Joey was right, I was even rambling in writing.
Reading over a few more pages throughout the journal, I tracked my slow progress through the hardest time in my life. From the first entries written by an angry, scared and lost girl, to the ones of strength and hope that everything really was going to be okay.
Closing the journal, I set it gently on the night stand beside my bed. My eyes immediately fell on the picture beside where I had placed the journal.
His green eyes stared back at me, as his happy smile brought a grin to my face.
Reaching out, I brought the frame to my face, looking over the photo carefully.
I had come a long way since the day I first wrote in that journal. I had learned lessons that I would never have learned if I had not gone through what I did. That life after love really is possible, and that moving on is inevitable. Because life does go on. And it just kind of drags you along with it.
Running a finger over the glass of the frame, I smiled at him.
Remembering Joeys words, I nodded to myself.
Giving the photo one last look, I placed it back in its spot on the night stand, before reaching up to turn off the light.
Closing my tired eyes, I sighed.
"Ill be over you soon"
