Today I quit you for good. At least that’s what I keep telling myself. All of the pictures, which I had taken down and put in drawers but secretly taken out every now and again to stare at and dream and wish, are stored in boxes, taped shut for protection. From the weather, from me.

The well worn t-shirts that still smell like you and fit as snugly as your arms encircling me are in a box in the garage labeled for Goodwill. Along with a few of the gifts you gave me which now bring me to tears just looking at.

I don’t listen to my iPod because all the songs remind me of you, even the old jazz tunes by Ella Fitzgerald that you claimed to hate but I would catch you humming when you thought I wasn’t listening. Music was my refuge, now it offered me no hope.

My life is a shell now, a painful reminder of what I used to have, the fullness of life with you in it. I’m a ghost in my own empty life. But now that I’ve quit you for good maybe I can start to patch up the pieces. Find all the little bits that have been shed during your leaving and finally put them back together again. Maybe not into the same person, but a more deserving person.

I think I can finally find the peace I need to move on without you. Because loving you was good. And wishing you would come back was oh so hopeful. But moving on – moving on is right.