I have spent three of the last six days hungover and tomorrow makes it four of seven. It's an empty thing and nothing much comes of the sweaty dancefloors and late night conversations of reminiscence backed by the sound of the rain powering down the burst drains, we have not had a summer, and I am lost still in winter, but I feel as though I might approach the springtime soon. It's my twenty-third birthday today, I woke up to the sound of somebody crying and only afterwards realised it had been me, my mother sang happy birthday to me while I hid my face in the pillow. Another year. You see, I do know that things will be alright and that I will be okay and that it's still early days and it's okay to feel sad. Three weeks is hardly a long time to get over five and a half years, but I dunno, it's my birthday, and I don't remeber my birthdays from before he came along, not really. And so I text him. I told him I was sad on today, my birthday, and that nobody wanted to be with me, or that they couldn't, or that they didn't care, and so he came with my parents and me for dinner and we both again knew why we broke up in the first place. Not for any bad reason, but because when we are together now, it's a different kind of free, happiness. I feel giddy, like it was back in the beginning because I'm not worrying anymore, we are done and there is nothing left to worry about, we tried, but we couldn't fix it. The hardest part of all of this is missing the company. There are no lies when I say that I have nobody left, besides myself, and I'm still working hard on actually liking my own company. This is not about holding hands under the covers or having a secret motive - this is about having a friend, and please universe, just don't kick me and try to show me how naive I'm being, just let me have it. This can work.