Homework from the therapist this week.

Dear Matty,

I have thought of you every day, every moment, this week. I always think of you, but this week my heart has just ached for you. I miss you so much. I miss my partner, my lover, my friend. My best friend. The person I was going to spend my life with.

You're gone and I still expect you to come home. I wait to hear your voice, or to read your name on the phone. I dream you are here with me. I miss you. I love you.

You make me laugh. You are so silly; so loving. You always take care of me, and I love taking care of you. I loved living through the moments where we took care of each other.

My heart aches every day. I cry for you every day. You went away and I don't know what happened. You died, you disappeared, you ceased to exist. You, my Matty, MY Matty was the figment of someone else's imagination. And he was perfect. You were perfect. You were always telling me how perfect and beautiful and wonderful I was. How you didn't deserve me.

I want you to come home. I want everything to go away. I want everything I know about who you really are- as a person, in your life, your name... everything. I just want it to go away and I want you to be who you told me and showed me you were. Because I miss that person. I LOVE that person. I was and am in love with that person. I mourn for him every day and just simply wish for him to come home.

I can't bear for another man to touch me. I feel dirty. Disgusting. Shameful. For what you did. I can't even accept a hug from a man in my own family without wanting to wipe my body clean and crying out in shame.

I don't want to live this life I have been living these past five months since I found out. I want it to just... go away. I want to open the door and I want you to come home. Please come home. I know you can't, and it never will happen... but please... some night, in my dreams sometime... give me some peace from the hell I live everyday, both in this life without you, without my partner, and my mate, and in the scarred reality you have left me with.

Somedays, like Sunday, I spend the whole day in bed. I just pull the covers over my head and forget the world exists. I laid there for hours. For the entire day. I just waited for it to be over.

In a lot of ways that is how I have been living my life now. Just waiting for it all to be over. There isn't anything to live for anymore. I lost you. You... went away. You shattered me. And when you did that, you took my sense of security within my self. You violated my sense of being. You took my dreams with you. I don't want that home or the family or the husband and the kids anymore. I can't bear it. I can't trust it. I can't trust anyone like I trusted you. I put more faith and truth into you than I ever did anyone else. And I lost more than I ever could have imagined. I can't endure that again. I don't know that I am even enduring it now.

Sometimes I think about dying. Without dreams, what is there left to live for? I clasp, and reach and look for something to dream about, to aspire to... And there isn't anything left. When the truth crashed through the computer screen that day, and came screaming at me in your house... it popped... my dreams were in this great, perfect baby blue balloon. And when I found out your secrets... one after another... it was like someone took a tiny thousand pins and pressed them into my perfect blue balloon until it just... dissappeared. Along with you.

I'm so confused. I'm angry with you. But I love you. Why is it we cannot stop loving those that abuse us? When will I be able to reconcile that the wonderful man who loved me and coddled me and cared for me like no one else had is the same man who deceived me so deeply?

The man I knew, my Matty, YOU would never have done anything to hurt me. I know that. Matt, I know that. I know you love me, unconditionally, and you were going to spend your life with me. You wanted no one else. I was the only one you were or could ever be with and you wanted to build a life with me. And one day, you just... passed into the fog and went away. I know you would do anything you could to get home. I know you love me. I love you too. Please come home. Please find a way home from that foggy heaven and save me from this. I love you and I need you. I just need you to hold me and tell me it's going to be alright.

I miss you tonight.

Always.