How ordinary, how familiar this scenario, that I would be driving to your house, singing along joyously to the radio eagerly anticipating the lemonade and the blankets and the warmth of your skin and the quiet crescendo of your laugh.

Now tears cascade down my face, shoulders shaking, as I pull up to your house, the usual vigorous fluttering in my stomach displaced by sinking dread and anticipation of the way your face will shatter into a million pieces when you lay eyes on my swollen and saturated eyes.

Hands trembling I order my finger to ring that bell, forcing my legs not to quake or bolt from that porch so that I could prove to you (or was it myself?) that I was only doing what was right.

But you are not the person I wanted to see.

You are much too thin and your clothes hang loosely on you like the blankets from our fort and I can see the bones of the skeletons you revealed to me that one rainy night.

Your eyes are dark but not a beautiful darkness like the night we laid under the stars, and your skin pallid as if it had never seen the sun when we walked the beaches, and it seems as if you know me from somewhere, because your expression is one of recognition.

But I’m afraid I do not recognize you and you are not the person I wanted to see.

Your voice is more quiet than my love’s, and I can’t hear it over the voices of conflict in my head that speak a language you will never understand but are desperately screaming out to you, to wake you up because I need to talk to you, not this stranger claiming your name.

Your brilliant mind and gentle spirit and cutting sarcasm cannot wipe my tears and they are nowhere to be found today, when I need them most, because they have been suffocated—

By insecurity, self-loathing, anxiety, depression.

They’ve infected you and now they gag you, wrapping tighter and tighter around your throat until it’s impossible to hear you, and now there is nothing to be said; it is done.

My heart is breaking as my words sink in and settle in your eyes, welling up until they spill over and I can’t take it as you wrap your arms around me, and your scent invades my lungs in a desperate last mission to make me stay.

Your scent reminds me of high school and dancing and the beach and baking and hockey and sushi and mittens and letters and goosebumps and the movies and joy, but how is it that such a scent originates from something so broken?

I see a spark in your eye that reminds me of my best friend, the one I had been hoping to see today, do you know him?

He has reddish brown hair and golden green eyes that crinkle when he smiles and impossibly straight teeth for someone who has never had braces.

He has a sense of humor that is the exact same twisted one as mine, and the compassion and intelligence that could solve all the world’s problems.

Yes, I see him in you, Stranger!

When did you lose yourself and become so foreign to me?  Was it when you realized how far five hundred miles is?  Or when you went to the meadow for the first time?  Or when you blamed yourself for everyone else’s shortcomings?

It’s okay Stranger, because I know who you are.  You simply need to remind yourself.  I cannot do it for you, and for that reason, I must go.

Remember that you are not your worries.  You are laughter, and embarrassing notes on the floor, and quiet kisses by the fire, and funny faces, and my love.

Maybe I will see you around, but do not wait for me, Stranger, for you have no time to waste.