Acceptance in the End Stage.

I pause to look back at where I am, and what I’ve accomplished, despite me telling myself I’ll never get here.

I look at myself in the mirror. At the image that looks back at me. I think to myself, “look how far you’ve come, doll. All by yourself. Nobody but YOU — yourself — has put in hard work and effort to get here and you’ve finally made it”.

I am 31 years old, working a full-time job in the health field, while going to Nursing school. Next week, I am due to start my first clinical rotation class along with one other nursing class. And I am proud of myself for getting this far. To be honest, I am surprised I have made it this far. Back when I was attending a community college, trying to get all of my pre-req classes finished, a counselor told me to think of another career that I might want to pursue — that it doesn’t sound like I will be able to become a Nurse because of the hardest time I have passing Math.

“There are plenty of other careers to go into, Nursing just isn’t one of them”.

I refused to give up, and I’m glad I didn’t. I remember coming home from school that day upset and crying, and you holding me and telling me that I am going to become the greatest Nurse there ever was.

Sounds like you saw something that day in me that I didn’t, huh?

Last night, I was in one of my depressive moods. I haven’t been able to journal in quite a long time because of life’s busy schedules. On the way home from a friend’s house is when my thoughts decided to reflect back on past times.

I wish you were here to see me now.

To see how far I’ve come against all odds.

To see how hard I work and how much effort I put into this.

But you’re not.

To say I miss you is an understatement. I miss you more than anyone could ever know. It’s been two years and two months since the split. And sometimes, it feels like day 1 all over again. Do people ever truly move on? Do they ever truly stop thinking about ‘that one person’ at all? Do those thoughts ever really go away?

Memories from our time together feel like it all happened years and years ago. I had my future in the palm of my hands, and in the blink of an eye, it’s gone. Sure, all the lessons I learned from you, from the split, I take with me everyday. But like I’ve said before: I wish I had the ability to live it all over again and do things differently. That split was awful, but what I find most awful is all the questions I have that won’t ever get any answers from you.

I feel like this is the farthest I’ve ever come to getting completely over you, but also I miss you too often to be completely OK. My life was normal. Happy.

Things may be coming together for me with school, but I think I would give anything to just be able to experience another day with you.