Last night, at 6:30 pm, I remember exactly where I was.

I was heading home, merging onto the 405 south from the 101. For no particular reason, I thought about how fun it would be, how nice it would be, to just call you up and say "Hey, babe!" as I've done literally thousands of times before. Just to see how you are, just to see what you've been up to.

I smiled at that thought, but I didn't call.

I miss you.

I know you read this. I feel like I'm writing a letter to a ghost right now. You can stay invisible, watching everything I do and think, always on the other side.

It's getting a little bit easier every day, but not by much. Too many little things remind me of you. A joke I make to someone in a certain voice. Somewhere I want to go to eat. Even the simple act of looking at a clock makes me think of you. I still always automatically add two hours to the time, as I've done every day since I've moved here, and thought about what you were doing in Chicago at that moment.

At 3 pm I imagined you leaving your office, taking the el home or walking downtown, shopping. At 8 pm, I knew you were starting to think about going to bed. And once it got to be around 10 pm here, if you hadn't called that night, I could be pretty sure you weren't going to.

Sometimes you surprised me, though.

I miss you.

I surprise myself sometimes, when I think about how you might be with him. I'm surprised that I'm not jealous. But then, I know that even though you like having him around, and really do enjoy his company, you miss me, and love me, as you sometmes said "more than you'll ever know."

I don't want you to be unhappy. I don't want you to be lonely. I understand why you need him around right now. God knows I could use a genuine distraction myself. Jonny's DVD collection just isn't doing it for me.

I just wish you had the strength to be alone right now. Maybe you do. Maybe you are. I have no way to know. I just know that being truly without you, truly alone with no distractions, made me realize some things.

It did make me aware of one of the most important things I never knew before:

I wanted to be with you.

I want you to realize things too. Even if those things have nothing to do with me, even if you realize it's not me you want to be with. I want you to be able to figure those things out.

I know you remember the gift I bought you before I left. I wanted us to always have a shared experience, even though we were thousands of miles apart. I bought you an electric timer that was connected to a night light. Yours was set to go off at 9 pm, and mine was set to go off at 7. That way, for at least an hour a day, we knew we'd be feeling the exact same thing at the exact same moment.

I know you know that I've taken mine out, and it's resting now on my closet shelf. I don't know what you did with yours. Another thing I've realized is that we never needed those nightlights at all.

You always know how I feel, every day.

I miss you.