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I dream about him often. I wish I didn't. The dream last night was so vivid, I almost expected to see him in my living room this morning.

I used to ride the GO train often after work on Friday nights to spend the weekend with him in Whitby, or I'd rent a convertible and drive out there to pick him up. We'd take turns cruising the winding roads up past Columbus, north of Oshawa. Howden Road was our favorite stretch of road. If his brother was with us, I'd open it up to 90 km/hr and he and his brother would stand up in the back seat, arms up the air, legs twisted around the seatbelts, screaming Depeche Mode lyrics at the tops of their lungs. I'd always drive. I'd look back and laugh at them, telling them if we hit a cow, we'd all be be dead.

We were young. We didn't care.

We met in college and started dating the summer of 1993. He wooed me on streetcars and buses. I was an outgoing girl running with a goth crowd by day and raving on Saturday nights. He was in love with Toronto, having grown up in Whitby. I was a city girl - born and bred. He was quiet, thoughtful and incredibly smart. He showed me things about the city I never cared to learn about.

We had our first kiss around two in the morning one really hot August night at the foot of the CN Tower, sitting near the fountain. He was incredibly shy. I was his first. For everything.

We lived together for less than a year before I decided to move out. Living with him was often complicated by the fact that he was diabetic and he managed the disease poorly. He began to rely on me to feed him and bring him back from his hypoglycemic states. He despised that he had the disease. It made him dark, and sometimes, hard to love.

When he moved back to Whitby to live with his mother after taking a job in Ajax, I only saw him on weekends. It took a toll on our relationship.

One night he went to bed, didn't take his insulin and let the disease consume him.

His name was Stephen. He died on December 23rd, 2007.

It took me a long time to shut down the rollercoaster ride he and I were on. The official break-up happened in November 1996, but for almost a year after that I would allow him back in, into my own apartment, where he would ask me what he could do to make me love him again. He'd often leave in anguish, tears threatening, not understanding why we couldn't be together.

He'd send me emails for years afterward telling me about whatever girl he was with. He was graphic, lewd and hurtful. I eventually changed jobs, had other relationships, changed email addresses, met my husband, moved to Oshawa, and lost track of him. I didn't want him to find me. I needed him to move on. We couldn't be friends.

In 2005, my daughter was born. Home on maternity leave, I would take Jayde out for walks, wanting to learn the neighbourhood I was living in. One day, a day in September, I was coming back home from one of my walks when I saw a person pacing nervously in front of my house. As I got closer, I recognized the familiar tic he had of putting one finger to his chin and tapping. My breath caught. My heart raced. I had no idea how he figured out where I lived. I was stunned. His face brightened when he saw me and he raced towards me. I immediately thought of all the weight I had put on since he had last seen me, and then I was mad at myself for caring. He looked tired, older of course, but genuinely happy to see me.

We stood on my driveway. Sweat trickled down my back. Jayde began to cry. All I remember is that he jokingly called Jayde a rat and he was telling me that his dad lived a few streets over. He had been visiting him a few weekends back when he passed by my house and saw me painting the trim of the front windows. I had completely forgotten his dad lived in the area. I didn't know Oshawa in the 90s and I didn't know it very well when I moved there years later. He was amazed at the coincidence. So was I.

He apologized for just showing up. He gave me his phone number. He told me he was living in downtown Toronto, right near St. Lawrence Market. He asked me if I was happy. He looked so sad - stricken. I had moved on. He was still trying.

I never phoned him. I put the piece of paper he gave me in the junk drawer and shoved it under a battery pack.

One day in the winter of 2009, I was heading home from work and caught sight of someone I recognized outside of Union Station. It was Mary. She was Stephen's best friend all through high school. I had met her a handful of times before she moved away, and out of province, shortly before Stephen and I got serious. She was happy to see me. We chatted for a bit. She was in town for a conference. I only asked because I felt I should. I asked her if she and Stephen had kept in touch.

She looked at me, puzzled. Then her eyes fell. "You don't know, do you?" She asked me.

"Stephen passed away."

I can't explain how I felt just then. I just knew I had to sit down. She walked me over to a row of benches.

"How?" I choked out.

She told me what his brother had told her but she and I both knew it wasn't what the family believed. She knew him better than I did. Even though we were older, she knew him. You always know your best friend. It doesn't matter if they're a thousand miles away. You know them.

After about 30 minutes, she asked me if I would be okay. I didn't know. We hugged and I left for the train.

The ride home is a blur. I went through an amazing range of emotions. The most prominent was anger. Anger at Stephen for not getting his life together and then I just fell apart. I rushed down the stairs to the washroom and slammed the door shut. I cried and cried. I cried until I felt my heart would break in two.

You see, I loved him. I never stopped. I just couldn't be with him. We couldn't be together.

All I wanted was for him to be happy. I couldn't make him happy. That's why I left. I knew he felt I was the only thing that made him happy. I knew that was wrong. When we were together, he lost sight of who he was. He wasn't living for him. He was living for us. I wanted him to love himself as much as I loved him. I used to scream at him through a closed bathroom door that he didn't understand that if he couldn't take care of himself, he couldn't expect me to. I was 22. I couldn't be his mother.

When I left him, all those years ago in 1996, after my dad packed the rest of my boxes into his minivan, I held Stephen's face between my hands and looked up him and told him I could no longer put my key in the door and come home to him dead. I didn't want to be the one to find him.

He told me he hated me.

"I hate you." That's what he said. I said nothing. I just walked out.

I realize we were young. Although he was three years older than me, we were young. I wanted more and I found it with my husband, but that didn't mean I stopped loving Stephen. But it's not the kind of love that builds a life together. It was the kind of love you have when you're young. When the person you're with is all that matters. Friends are blown off. Shifts at work are skipped. You're sober but you're drunk.

I couldn't drive home when my train pulled into Oshawa the night I learned Stephen had died. Instead I drove to Whitby. I wanted to go to the place where he took me and tried to ask me to marry him. He was scared to death. He never got the words out. I played stupid. I laughed. I made jokes and then I threw myself at him, kissing him hard and stifling his words. If he didn't say them I wouldn't have to tell him no. We lay there listening to the lake, my head on his chest listening to his heart hammer away, certain I was also listening to it fall apart.

The Whitby waterfront has changed so much since then. I was confused about where to go or how to get there, so I parked at the marina and I cried. I think I was shouting and hitting the steering wheel. I was... just ... so mad.

I never felt guilty because I was always honest with him. All I could think about was his mother, his brother, his friends and his cat. I thought of his things, possessions he valued. I tried to remember his laugh. I tried to remember all the stupid things we said to each other, promised each other and the hateful things we said because we were hurting.

I didn't get home until 1 am. My husband was asleep. I had told him by text message I was working late. I crawled into bed and cried myself to sleep.

I couldn't save him. I never could.

The dreams come and go. I can't stop them.