By Martin Falatic
Written 1993-11-17
Revised 1997-03-19

“Good-bye,” she said. Her parting words still echo in my mind, reverberating in the void once occupied by my heart. It was a painful separation, one of anger and despair. I thought I could never be the same. I looked at the old pictures for days, for weeks, for months. Her smiling face, captured so perfectly on those dusty frames, left me feeling so empty inside. It was as if I had lost not only her but a part of myself: something that I’d shared with her, in love. Her departure left me feeling as if I had fallen from some sort of higher plane, into a personal hell. Sometime — I don’t know exactly when I first realized this — I came to feel better about things. It was as if I was awakening from an uncomfortable, nightmarish slumber. My life was slowly coming back together, though I knew it wouldn’t be at all the same. “Good-bye,” she said. And I was forever changed.