I tick...

The dreams at night, in the safety of darkness, are those most real, most soulful, most tentative. But if creation begins in the thought, and then moves to the word, and then becomes manifest through action, she should trust that it can survive the light also. She can survive the light also. We can hope.

In her journal she wrote,

Some part of me is close to getting over you. Some part of me is understanding what it all means and that I can be ok someday. I don't like that part of me. She doesn't understand anything at all. She doesn't understand what it's like to wake up, and not be able to breathe, the weight is so heavy. Remember how I always talked of drowning? How I always thought that drowning would be my death? I am drowning. I am suffocating. I can't scream. I can't make a sound. I can only flail my arms, and watch my hair move in slow motion, and open my mouth into a silent scream and swallow thickness. I miss you. It's like a pulse in the back of my eyes. Throughout the day and it begins the second I wake up, the second I'm pulled from my dreams where you still exist. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. Your name is written in the beat of my heart and your eyes are part of every breath I take and I miss you. That part of me that is getting over this, you, is wrong. She's wrong, she doesn't understand that I am not whole anymore.

"I can't compete with a ghost," he said. And he walked away. He was right. To walk away. To say that. He was right.

Someday, Emma was going to get over the ghost, but not for him. It wasn't time that would make a difference it was her decision. It was her decision to cling to darkness. It was her decision to wallow, out of the light. He was disappointed in her, for her decision, for her choice. He was disappointed in himself, he had believed he was more patient, he had thought that he could rise above it. But he couldn't compete with a ghost who got more perfect with every passing moment.