The days after that were hell. Michael didn't come back the day after, or the month after, or the year after. I knew, at least, that he wasn't dead. Fifty insisting, pleading, nagging, threatening calls from me later, one of his friends finally broke and said 'he's fine, just forget him for awhile'. But no one would tell me more. I waited, I pleaded with everyone to tell me where he is. I racked up my phone bill some more, beat down a few more of his friend's doors. All I got in the end were the same pitying eyes and mantra of 'he's fine, just forget him for awhile."

No amount of thinking could help me to understand why he left me so suddenly. There were no signs that our relationship was anywhere near fizzling out. If anything we were both still on our honeymoon high.

I knew that he wouldn't abandon me. There was the final paper note as testament to that. I knew that he wasn't the kind of person to fuck and leave. We had built a home together. We were all each other had. We were in love and committed to each other. We knew that the odds of us finding each other in those homophobic times were rough, so we stuck together so tightly that a hurricane couldn't tear us apart. He couldn't have abandoned me.

One season turned into another. His friends stopped picking up my calls or answering me when I knocked. Or maybe they changed their numbers and moved, all of them. Either way, I couldn't find anyone to file a police report with me. The police department was already convinced that I was loonies because I sat in their halls everyday for a week after Michael disappeared.

When winter turned to spring, I moved out of our one bedroom and into a studio across the hall from our old place. I wanted to make sure that he could still find me if he came back to his building. I kept my old number. My name was prominently scrawled on the mailbox downstairs. I checked every day to make sure of it. My boss at the diner was convinced that I had some mutant kind of OCD the way I would check the customers out, hoping to find that one of them is Michael.

I don't know how I survived those two years. I think I stopped feeling after awhile. My memories started to distort themselves. I managed to convince myself that Michael left me for someone better. It was the only thing to save my sanity; anything to stop myself from waking up from nightmares where I saw him being beaten up by gay bashers.

Sometimes I would find something of his mixed in with my stuff. If I caught myself early enough, I would just throw it into a box of his other stuff under the bed and pretend that I hadn't come across it. But most likely, I would end up being miserable for the rest of the day.

When summer rolled around and demanded that I rolled up my sleeves, my coworkers started showing concern. My arms were skeletal, and the thin summer attire didn't do anything to help augment my diminishing figure. A girl at work forced me to get on the scale and with no small amount of fussing, announced that I was in the double digits. She and a few other waitresses showed concern, but I was too determined to lock out everyone that they gave up trying to engage me after awhile. At least I was concentrated at work. I made sure that my shifts were conducted to draconian perfection.

Because I needed something to concentrate on, I submerged myself in planning out the rest of my life in intricate details. Everything else around me was out of my control so I might as well do something to make me feel like I was still in charge of my life. The money I saved up from my job allowed me to finish my college degree by taking courses at night. I tried to take enough classes so that I wouldn't have to go home and fall asleep to nightmares. The counselor told me that at the pace I was going, I was going to get my degree in two years but I would probably burn myself out first. Then again, burning out or graduating both seemed like attractive prospects to me so I pushed myself all the harder.

I went out on a few dates at some point, because I wanted to convince myself that I had moved on. But Michael's ring continued to stay on the necklace around my neck. I could never take it off, as much as I wanted to sometimes. If I caught my reflection after a shower and saw the ring hanging on my chest, I would get the inexplicable urge to punch all the mirrors. More likely though, I would lose all energy and appetite and fall to the bed to another unwelcomed nightmare. Two years went by that way. I was still me in the end, perhaps less because the other half of me was gone, but still me nonetheless.

So it's without question that I wasn't much for holding on to hope at the end of those two years. Michael was still a bitter part of my life, but I had in one way or another forced myself to move on from thoughts of him.

Two years, and I learned how to give up, to not wait for him to come back anymore. My life moved forward because I willed it to. I couldn't will anything or anyone else to conform to my expectations, so I forced myself to. I couldn't stand the stagnancy, so I forced myself to live. Sometimes I even managed to keep my mind clear of him for an hour. I was learning to be a person again. I was growing too used to his absence that my heart was learning to heal itself again.

So it's with no small amount of surprise when Michael turned up dead in my apartment two years later.

Wow, so I started this more than two years ago and now I realize that continuing it means that there's a lot of problems with the plot. I just spent the whole day writing/revising the outline and working out kinks. Lemme know if something seems inconsistent ._.;