love is a mixtape.

You made me a playlist that I now listen to obsessively.

I breathe in each lyric that I think means something. I breathe in lyrics like I am breathing in the scent of your skin. Lyrics that express addiction to a person. Lyrics that dabble in our love "being alive." I breathe in these lyrics while I sleep, and I am sleeping to dream of you. I breathe in these lyrics with each strained breath as I run, and I have been running so hard to forget you that I struggled to sit to write these words because my thighs ache as much as my heart.

Questions repeat in my mind as I shower. As I do the dishes. As I walk to work. As I live my life virtually without you in it.

Was it real? Do we really feel this way about each other? Is it just me suffering?

I have cried so often, so randomly, I was convinced it was hormonal and that I was pregnant, even though I was bleeding at the time. I read the instructions to the First Response test I bought dozens of times, just to make sure I was right. Of course, and quite luckily, I am not pregnant.

I have reacted so violently to all of this that I am now convinced I am out of my mind.

I preferred things when we were sneaking around. I got to see you, and talk to you, and touch you much more often. It's not about sex. It's about me needing you. It's about me needing us.