I met Will on a dating app. Never in a million years would I anticipate the emotional awakening I would have the moment I laid eyes on him. Certainly I had been in love before, but I had never quite felt a love like this.

We met on a surprisingly cool South Florida night. We rarely get those here. I couldn’t tell you where we were exactly. It was a random parking lot somewhere near the water. I remember the salty wind whipping my hair in my face and cooling the sweat that had been dripping in a slow line down my spine. The nerves had gotten to me. I hadn’t been out with anyone new in so long. Will was only supposed to be an experiment, you see. I had caught my (now ex) on that same dating app trying to hit on a bunch of women and when I confronted him, his response was,

“Yea, I may have tried but I honestly barely got a response and only was on it for 3 days. Go ahead and try it for yourself. You’ll see.”

Cue Will. We met, we talked and walked and laughed. He told me about how he had been forced to travel all over the world as an army brat. He was originally from Louisiana, but was down here for drug rehabilitation. Most people would see that as a red flag; I grew up in a very dysfunctional household so I saw it as a green light. I was very young and very naive. He was not much taller than me and had darker hair, which was pretty much the opposite of my ex. I had found myself mentally comparing him the whole night and loving all the differences.

After hours of walking around and talking, we ended up on his back porch, sitting on a couch together. He looked at me as if I was an exquisite piece of art he was seeing for the first time and he just couldn’t avert his gaze. He leaned in and kissed me. It was at that moment I knew a big piece of my heart was always going to be his.

I never believed in love at first sight, and to be honest - I still don’t. I can tell how I feel about someone best when we kiss. There is something intangible that sparks when the chemistry is right. Things got heated and I’ll spare you the details. The next year and a half of my life I spent in, what now has a beautifully coined term, a “situationship”. I was in, he was out. He was in, I was out. We were constantly either fighting or fucking but no matter who else came into my life or his, he was the only one that held my heart and he knew it. He struggled on and off with his sobriety, which, in reality, was the main cause of all our turmoil. When he would go off the rails, he would push me away.

Finally, there came a point where I could see a future for us. He was sober. I had become sober myself. The only thing that worked against us at this point? Time. He needed to have a year clean before he could date anyone, and after all the fighting and betrayal, I had a really difficult time waiting. I waited nine months and thought, isn’t this enough already? But he rejected me still and I just couldn’t handle the rejection after all the deception.

I met someone else. Someone who, at the time, seemed to be the exact opposite of everything he was. Stable, successful, genuine, honest. Although Will would always have that piece of my heart, I thought I was doing the right thing for myself by letting him go. Our fights were toxic, the betrayal ran deep, and our relationship was dysfunctional. I loved him deeply, but I had to choose myself at a certain point. I thought that maybe this new person could be a fresh start.

It didn’t take long for Will to realize he was losing me for good. He reached out and wanted to meet up in person. He wanted to make amends. I knew for a fact if I saw him in person, there would be no stopping whatever happened between us. The attraction, chemistry, spark, love, whatever you want to call it was too strong. I was a moth to his flame. Only this time I had been reborn with lessons learned and knew better than to keep going back and burning myself. I didn’t want to tempt myself and risk losing what I was building with this new person. So, although it pained me and I did tell him I forgave him for everything, I denied him and myself the opportunity of seeing each in person this last time.

A couple of months go by. I had to block him. It was too painful to see him and too tempting to receive calls or messages. One night I received a call from an unknown number. It was around three in the morning, I answered, and it was him. My breath caught in my throat, I hadn’t heard his voice in so long. He had been kicked out of where he was staying and needed a place to go. He was clearly inebriated. The old me would have dropped everything and everyone to run to his rescue. The old me had been there with him once, holding his hand, sleeping in a plastic chair and waiting for him to wake up while he laid in a hospital bed after he OD’d on my bathroom floor, after he swore he wouldn’t bring that shit in my house. I put my foot down, and I told him no. I would not come running to his rescue tonight. Not anymore. I wished him well, but I wouldn’t be bailing him out anymore. Tough love…Right.

A few more months go by. This new guy was starting to show me his true colors, but that’s a different story for a different time. All my life I have struggled with having horrible nightmares. Dreams so vivid I get woken up by someone else because I am screaming and crying in my sleep. I can recall a lot of them, although I really wish I couldn’t. This night I dreamt that Will and I were walking and talking again. It wasn’t romantic or anything of the sort. It was more like he was trying to tell me something but couldn’t get the words out, or I just couldn’t understand him. He sounded muffled. He drank a sip of the can of Jupina (and for those who don’t know what that is, it’s a pineapple flavored soda) that was in his hand and a second later vomited right where he stood. When I looked down, it looked like he was throwing up chunks of dirt. He looked back up at me and smiled with pieces of soil still in his teeth. He looked sickly and pale. That’s when I startled awake.

I picked up my phone and the brightness of the screen blinded me semi-permanently. It was three in the morning. I was feeling unsettled about the dream and thought maybe I should just check out his Facebook page and do a quick social stalking to see what he had been up to, make sure everything was okay. I unblocked him, pulled up his page and my heart sunk.

Only three weeks before, his sister had posted a memorial video to his page. When I did a deeper dive to uncover what happened I discovered that he had nowhere to go, so he moved back home, to Louisiana, presumably around all his old drug buddies. This is where he OD’d and died.

I dreamt about Will for years after this. Dreaming that he had never really died in the first place. I think my mind just didn’t want to accept it. It’s been difficult to face that he is really gone, and so is the piece of my heart that I left with him.