Yours

January 31st

Dear Sophia,

I love you.

I can’t describe how I’m feeling right now. I’m not feeling. I don’t know what’s going on.

I know you wouldn’t do this again on purpose. I know you wouldn’t. I don’t know where you are. I don’t know what’s happening. I’m looking at the calendar. It’s right there. Sophia. Sophia. Sophia. It says it right there. Sophia. Today. Thursday. Sophia. But you weren’t there. I don’t know where you were. I don’t know where you are.

It makes me feel lost Sophia. I don’t know whether I’m upset or angry or worried. It’s not fair for me to be any of those things until I know what’s going on. Things aren’t right. I can’t settle when things aren’t right Sophia. It says it right there on the calendar. I’m looking at it now. Sophia. Today. Thursday. But I haven’t seen you today. That doesn’t make sense.

It was even worse in Starbucks when everyone could see me. They could see I’d been stood up. I know it wasn’t deliberate. But they don’t know that. I checked the high street up and down a bunch of times. I saw this guy with a dog sitting next to him. A pair of women came up to him and one of them bent down and started stroking it. I got really excited. I thought I’d solved it. When I got closer I saw you weren’t the woman stroking the dog and you weren’t the woman standing up next to her either.

When I was a kid I was out shopping with my mum and I ran down one of the aisles to pick up some juice or something. Some drink I wanted. When I turned round my mum wasn’t where I thought she was. The whole world felt wrong. I don’t know how old I was but I remember it really well. I went to where I thought she was but I couldn’t see her anywhere. I walked down the ends of the aisles trying to see her but there were too many people and I couldn’t see past all the knees and waists. I felt like I was never going to get home again. I remember thinking at least there was lots of food in the supermarket if I got stuck there. I walked down one of the aisles and I heard some shoes coming up behind me. I knew the sound of those shoes. It was my mum. I turned around and hugged her legs. Only it wasn’t her at all. It was some woman I didn’t know. She looked down at me and laughed. I wasn’t embarrassed. I was just sad. I just wanted to feel better and instead I had this big stupid woman laughing at me. It was awful. It all came back to me when those women with the dog weren’t you. It felt horrible. It was horrible.

I don’t know how I feel now. I don’t want to worry. I think it’s best that I don’t worry too much. It’s hard not to be angry if I’m not worrying though. It feels like it’s got to be one or the other. Something isn’t right here.

I just want everything to be ok. It’s not long now until you move in. We’ve had a month of this year to get things sorted and things aren’t in place yet. This isn’t how it was meant to go.

I love you.

Yours,

Andrew