Each day began the same, and each day ended the same. There was hardly any in between, just a blur of lights and screams, a collection of the desperate feelings that would rise in my chest and then fall to the pit of my stomach with a hollow thud with each passing hour. There was never happiness, never the sweet sensation of a smile or joy. Simply a memory, if it even was a memory, that kept me moving, kept me searching, hoping, calling out a name that everything but my core itself had forgotten.

And then as each day ended, it would dissolve into nothing, fading away like a pile of dust being carried to sea by a sharp gust of cruel wind.

But I kept walking, kept my hope alive that someday, somehow, I would find him. Him. Like a mirage on the horizon, a glimpse at perfection that I could hold onto. I walked over mountains, cities, plains… everything, anything, but it was all the same. Simply the same ground under my feet that, even though I was constantly in motion, seemed to keep me in the same place. Trapped. I was trapped, but I had long ago forgotten what I was trapped in. A cage, perhaps. Something inside of me told me differently. Told me that this world, this hell, and even the cruel vision of heaven itself in his eyes… it all wasn’t real.

Or possibly it was real, but I wasn’t. Maybe I was a ghost, wondering forever on a lonely earth, searching for the one thing I needed most, the one thing I lost, and the one thing I’ll never find. I sometimes realized that nothing existed. That each day the sun would rise over whatever landscape I found myself in, but it didn’t rise. Not really. It was just a burning hole in the sky. Nothing had meaning. Nothing had beauty, color, life… it all simply happened to happen.

Of course I was dreaming, but the awareness of such didn’t fade into my consciousness often, only some days when I began to remember, but when the memories of long ago became too strong, I blocked them out. I forgot. I willed myself to forget, and yet I kept searching, playing a sick game with myself. I was in the depths of my own mind, lost, trapped, alone.

Such a judgment day, as I spitefully called them in my head, proved to be the worst I had had. I had stumbled, fallen onto a lump of gritty sand of the shore of my subconscious, and the memories rushed in. His eyes. Two orbs of unreadable sky, gazing at me from across the room, above me, next to me… but they didn’t look at me. They looked into me. Every time. He looked into the very depths of my soul, my very being, and picked me apart, piece by piece, until I was before him, bare, in my truest form.

Then came the rest of him, crashing over me like a tidal wave. The soft curve of his lips as he smiled, the smooth surface of his skin, the gentleness of his touch. They came powerfully, the memories of him, pulling me back to a reality that I had stored away deep within myself. The truth. I found myself on my knees, and he was all around me. Everywhere. I could feel him everywhere, in the same, in the salty air, in the beating of my own heart. His eyes. His eyes.

Pain tore through me like a blade, ripping me nearly in half, a white heat blurring my vision and causing me to lunge forward. Now on my hands and knees, I screamed. I screamed as my soul tore itself to shreds, and then I knew, if only for an instant, what had happened. Why I was searching, why I was wondering around this god forsaken place. As the realization took hold of me, the scorching sun disappeared, being replaced with dangerous looking storm clouds, growing and tumbling over me. With a flash of lightning, the suddenly alive and flowing ocean before me froze into sheer ice. I could hear it cracking and shaking, as if the water below was trying to break free of its prison, but the ice didn’t give way. Cold, wet snowflakes began to descend from the sky, a sign of defeat. I was defeated.

I realized then that there was no use in searching. No use in wondering, calling for him, telling myself that he’d be there, around that corner, over that hill. He was never coming back, and neither was I. We were both trapped in different fates. I, to lose my mind in my own mind, and he… was gone.