It might have been."

It took a long time before that phrase didn't make me well up with tears, crying for days and send me into a depression that only ended at the bottom of a drink. All I wanted was to forget.

To forget that the most. wonderful. thing. that had ever happened to me, had to turn his back on me when I needed him the most.

I forced him to. I made him leave. I gave him no choice. I messed up big time. You only get so many chances. I told him that I never regret anything I do. I told him I wouldn't fight. But I should have fought. Until the end of time. I should have...

It all started the summer between my junior and senior year of high school when my church was planning a trip to Mexico. I couldn't tell you to this day what made me want to go. I can't tell you how we got the money together to make it happen. And I can't tell you how it came down to only Dave and I going on the trip. But there was this series of events that were both frustrating, silly, maddening and crazy that lead to the very fact it was just us. We prepared, packed and planned this trip for quite a while but little did I know that those days in Mexico could never have been planned. They just happened.

We had the best time. We laughed harder than we ever had before. We turned the weirdest situations into the best stories. We broke the law. We got lost. We ate crazy food that I swear to this day was dog. We snuck into each others rooms at night to talk the night away. We crammed ourselves against each other in taxis and wished the ride would never end.

I wish that trip had never ended.

When we got home from Mexico and for the next year he and I were inseparable. We worked at the same place; we had the same friends. We started school. I even switched my classes around to be in his classes. We switched our lockers to be side by side. I woke him up every morning to have breakfast. I skipped class to eat lunch with him.

Dave gave me the chance to truly figure out who I was. He was the first person to listen to me. He was the first person I could debate EVERYTHING with. He and I would talk for hours and hours... Endless topics and thought provoking conversation. Every moment spent with Dave was like a new dream coming true.

Now I had had previous boyfriends before Dave but no one like him. It wasn't until Dave that I knew what love meant. Not puppy love. But love. Friendship. Grow old together love.

Everything about him took my breath away. The way he smiled. The way he walked. His crazy hair his parents were always begging me to get cut. The way he smelled. The way he laughed. The way he thought he knew how to dance. The way he hated his middle name. The way he held my hand. The way he held me when I cried. The way his eyes lit up when he was excited about something. Just simply... everything.

He was the one that was there when I had had enough of my parents and moved out. He was there to hold me when I couldn't take it anymore. He was there when anything went wrong. He made me feel safe. And always made it right.

Then I let myself ruin us. I flushed it all down the toilet in one decision. I stopping thinking and acted.

When he came to me with the saddest eyes, a broken heart and a simple question why? I couldn't answer. All I could mutter was I don't know. And I let him walk out that door.

And I fell apart. I can barely remember the next year. Between drinking and anything else I could do to get my mind off of him, I was a wreck. Unrecognizable to everyone and myself. The next 4 years were a blur and as I finally began to come about, I slowly started to find myself again. That Ryan I was with him. Me.

I haven't spoke to him in years but I think of him every day. I wonder what it would be like to run into him now. I pray that someday I will. What would I say?

I would want to tell him that I was sorry. That it seems like a lifetime ago that we were each others everything, yet he has made an impact in my life that I can never replace. Never forget. I would tell him that I have had a thousand conversations with him in my mind as I cried myself to sleep. That we may have been young then, we may be completely different people now, but that I wish I hadn't done it without him. That many times when I thought I wouldn't make it, thinking of him gave me strength.

I would say to him like I did years ago as we parted ways to college, "I will love you forever."