Prologue
I sat on the couch closest to the fire curling my toes in the warmth. I watched as the newspapers flickered, withered, and then turned to ash by the flames. I felt as if my heart was in that fire, burning with such intensity and passion then dying into nothingness with time. I breathed in the smell of winter and chocked back the tears that were destined to dive down my cheeks. I was in pain but this was nothing new, I had suffered from this burning coal in my chest for almost a year.
He was gone and never coming back, I understood this from the moment I got up from that lunch table and said I was done. I would have given him everything in the world, my heart included. But there comes a time in a person's life when they realize that when they say they are willing to sacrifice anything for something that means including their life. Now what I mean by this is I was willing to die for him, but was not willing to give him my future to destroy. I knew we were heading down hill fast but could not stop this, so I made the decision to be slightly selfish, if you must, and do something for my life and what I really wanted.
Even though I had left him with my own free will, that did not mean I didn't mourn the loss of our love. It may seem silly to you, but I had never known that heart break actually physically hurt. That emptiness in your chest, the tightness of every breath you take, that feeling that you could break with every second passing. It has faded with time, but I get a scent of his cologne and it's back tenfold. I was just a lonely, broken hearted silly teenager. I had tried to get over him, but it seems after him I had lost my touch with boys. I just couldn't flirt right, couldn't hold an interesting conversation if my life depended on it, I was relationship challenged. So I vowed, I swore off men until after college. I was going to make myself right again before trying to make a good relationship once more.
When I had made this promise to my heart I had no way of seeing the future or seeing that I would meet Him within eleven months of my dedication. But that's how fate works isn't it? You finally get the one thing you've been searching for, the moment you stop.