By ISABELLA BURCIAGA
Staff Writer
My heart used to pound so hard in my ears when I was anywhere near you. I felt like I couldn’t breathe with you so near, my cheeks would feel so warm and I couldn’t go a second without noticing you. Now, my heart still bumps a little more than it should when I’m near you, but not as much as it used to. I don’t feel you anymore like I used to, your presence no longer comforts me like it once did. Everything about us is ‘past tense’, there is you and there’s I. My identity is mine alone, no names intertwined or half of a whole me. I’m one piece by myself and before, I won’t lie, I felt incomplete and jaded. I didn’t know how to go back to just me, I hadn’t embraced that feeling since I laid eyes on you. Now it is only me, and I will be okay. My heart is missing only a part but I have everything else keeping me held together. My family, my friends, my dreams. MY lungs will continue to burn for who knows how long but I will be able to stand strong, one-piece returning to almost whole. And that’s good enough.