My dear. . ., how I've wanted so many times over these past years to call, to write, to somehow let you know that I'm acutely aware of how much I failed you, and to beg your forgiveness. I'm sorry that I am not that strong of a person. For although I turned my back on you at a time when you needed me most, I knew that I could never live with the same from you. And the fear of your rejection, though deserved and expected, was more risk than I was willing to take. And, so I've been these. . . years without you.

You're never gone. You're with me still. It's so hard sometimes - it's so hard all the time to go on without you, always wondering. I stop at random moments and wonder where you are and what you're doing right at that exact second. It's so damn hard to go on without you, but you showed me the strength and the beauty in myself and it is that strength and beauty that help me go on without you in my life, but forever in me.

. . . distance shall be our end and killer. I have come to love and treasure you more than anyone else that I have met here, a love on the highest regions of my heart. . . But I seem to, in some way, need your love in return, and when I feel that. . . I fear the loss, which in my life always seems inevitable. I am scared. . . and even though I am not, I feel alone, and I just don't know what to do anymore. . . I miss you so, I really do. I guess that is what scares me above the most, the ability to miss someone this much.

Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling into at night. I miss you like hell.

Absence from whom we love is worse than death, and frustrates hope severer than despair.

It's hard to be strong when someone special leaves your life, and it doesn't get any easier with practice.

Letting go is the hardest thing to do, especially if the person is your world, your life and the one you entrusted to hold your heart forever.

I miss you when something really good happens because you're the one I want to share it with. I miss you when something is troubling me because you're the one who understands me so well. I miss you when I laugh and cry because I know that you are the one that makes my laughter grow and my tears disappear. I miss you all the time, but I miss you most when I lay awake at night and think of all the wonderful times that we spent with each other, for those were some of the best and most memorable times of my life.

Forgive the tears, they are only bits of selfishness that could be contained no longer. I only wish I could keep you a little longer, within the boundaries of my immediate life. Thank you for touching my life and letting me know you.

It is always painful to part from people whom one has known for a very brief space of time. The absence of old friends one can endure with equanimity. But even a momentary separation from anyone to whom one has just been introduced is almost unbearable.

Why can't we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together? I guess that wouldn't work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves and then we have to say goodbye. I hate goodbyes. I know what I need. I need more hellos.

'You'll get over it.' It's the cliches that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life forever. You don't get over it because 'it' is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? The articularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not stopped by anyone but death. The hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?

We're all lonely for something we don't know we're lonely for. How else to explain the curious feeling that goes around feeling like missing somebody we've never even met?

It had been years. They sent cards on holidays, gifts at Christmas, left messages on each other's answering machines, relieved that no one was home. There was just a. . . discomfort, a steady drifting apart and no good reason to come together. Now it was too late.

I miss you when I'm sad. I miss you when I'm lonely. But, most of all, I miss you when I'm happy.

There are. . . people we wonder about, but don't make. . . attempts to contact. Perhaps we're afraid of empty conversation with someone we're not sure if we ever connected to in the first place, or perhaps we're curious about someone whose life we watched for awhile from afar. Sometimes, it's just been too long, and sometimes we can't even articulate the need to know whatever happened to so-and-so. Where are they? Did they make it? Are they happy? Are they passionate about something in their lives? Are they anything like the people we once knew?

It's so hard to struggle here and I want to live, want to go on, but this sorrow holds me down in everything I do and I can't seem to break free. I have all these pains and eyes weighing on me like I'm atlas and I feel. . . my heart is beginning to buckle. . . you used to keep me sane and safe and alive and used to assure me how good I was and that I would not die alone and I would go on and live and be happy, the one who always seemed to be my life-line to reality and the hope and knowledge that at least someone loved me, even when I knew the rest of the world scorned me. And I miss you, whom in such a short time, gave me a spark and a hope that burnt in the center of me. . . someone who I saw a mirror in and in who's eyes I saw things that I thought may have died in me, and the fact that I could see them, could look and feel them, gave me hope for myself. . .

At first, it was the cooling off period. Then it became the prideful period of who would give in and call first. Then life just became too busy with other things. And before I knew it, it had been too long, too painful, and not enough "I'm sorrys" in the world to convey how I felt. And slowly, time took the memory of you to that place accessed only in the deepest of sorrows. . .

I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. Still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone.

Even when we're apart I feel the warmth of our friendship. And I wanted to drop this note to you - for no particular reason at all - Just because I miss you.

When I think of you I get this feeling that I want to see you. I miss you.

Like all the dead, he picks up his disguise, shakes it off and slowly pulls down the shade, fading out like an old movie. Now he is gone, as you are gone. But he belongs to me like lost baggage.

But that was another life. One day, you turned away and let me here to founder in the stillness of your wake.

If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.

Absence extinguishes small passions and increases great ones, as the wind will blow out a candle and blow in a fire.

Sometimes, only one person is missing, and the whole world seems depopulated.