The Part Where I Celebrated My Anniversary Alone

My one-year anniversary with Doricha was in January.  It was one of the loneliest most miserable days of my life up to that point.  Which is pretty sad because the event that we were celebrating was one of the happiest moments of my life.

I kept building the day up in my mind and I really shouldn't have done that.  Or...it wasn't even a buildup necessarily.  I just wanted so desperately for it to be something special.  We were nearly 1500 miles apart and all I wanted was to be able to go on a date.  I wanted us to be able to get dinner and then cuddle up together.  I wanted to see a movie.  I wanted to go to a park and chase fireflies.  I wanted to build a snowfort.  I wanted to do anything in the world really, as long as we were together.

But I woke up that day alone.  And I fell asleep that day alone.  That day I didn't hold hands with her.  I didn't get to hug her or hold her or be held by her.  There were no happy anniversary kisses.  There were no whispered words as we fell asleep together.

We promised each other that we would make it up to ourselves.  When things were okay and we were physically back together, we would spend an evening together for just us.  We promised that we would spend our eighteen month anniversary together and make it everything that our one-year couldn't be.

It wasn't the way it should have been.

Because it was more than getting to spend the day together.  It was more than being able to celebrate our romance and our love.  It was that I was upset because I couldn't be with my love and I could tell no one.  My roommates were oblivious to the fact that I was hurting.  If they had known how much my heart was breaking, I know that they would have wrapped their arms around me.  I could have sat with them and cried.

I mean, maybe.  In the alternate universe that is a perfect world where I can tell my roommates about Doricha and it's okay and nobody's weirded out and nobody thinks that I'm going to Hell, they hold me and I cry.  And it's not all "okay" but it's a little more okay.

It wasn't just that I was alone without Doricha.  It was that I was absolutely and positively alone.  And I always had been.  But that night the silence of the void was deafening.