why can’t I let go of you?

There are feelings I keep trying to release, feelings I keep trying to pry from the corners of my heart, yet no matter what I do, they cling to me. I tell myself over and over that I should be past this by now, that time should have softened what I feel for you, that distance should have created space where clarity could grow. Instead, I find myself trapped in the same emotional loop, circling the same thoughts, unable to step forward no matter how desperately I try.

I have tried everything I know. I have tried talking to other guys and letting new conversations fill the silence you left behind. I have tried burying myself in distractions, hoping that if I kept myself busy enough, the ache in my chest would eventually dissolve. I have tried pretending that I am fine, painting on a smile and convincing everyone around me that I have moved on, even when I know I have not convinced myself. None of it works. None of it comes close to touching the space you occupied. No matter where I turn, I find myself comparing everything to you, and I always end up feeling the same hollow ache because none of them are you.

I replay everything in my mind, scene after scene, searching for some hidden moment where things shifted. I look for the detail I must have overlooked, the sign I missed, the point where everything changed. I ask myself why you reached out to me again if all it would do was open the wound I thought I was learning to live with. Your presence brought back hope, and your distance brought back confusion, and I am still trying to figure out what I am supposed to make of any of it. It feels like reaching for answers that keep slipping through my fingers, like running toward a horizon that only moves farther away. The harder I try to understand, the more lost I feel.

The truth is that you have never been gone from my mind. I wake up with you lingering in the back of my thoughts, and I fall asleep with the echo of what we were still tugging at me. I think about you while I am doing the most ordinary things, in those quiet moments when everything is still and I have no choice but to feel what I feel. I think about what it was like when things were good, when everything felt effortless, when being around you felt like breathing. I think about how quickly all of that slipped away, and how powerless I was to stop it. I never wanted anything complicated from you. I never asked for perfection or promises you could not keep. I only wanted you to be yourself, and for that to be enough. Somehow it feels like even that was asking too much.

So I sit with these questions that never seem to change. I keep hoping that one day something will finally make sense, that one day the sharpness of missing you will start to dull, that one day I will wake up and feel even a little lighter than the day before. But that day has not come yet. I still feel the weight of what was and what never became. I still feel the ache of everything unspoken and everything unresolved.

And as much as it hurts to admit it, I cannot pretend differently. I miss you, Seth Alexander Evans. I miss you in a way I do not fully understand, in a way that stretches into every part of my life. I miss you more than I ever expected to, and more than I know what to do with. I am trying to move forward, but a part of me is still standing in the doorway of what we were, waiting for something to finally make sense.