This is almost good. Your jumping from past to present with stare is a bit jarring as you jump right back to the past with realized. The To cope with you sentence is a bit over wordy, and probably should be rewritten a different way. Also its tense is confusing, ...was a fraction... are you done coping already, is your life over already?. The ending could be good but the lead in to the last half of the sentence is messy. You've been gone for a while that I forced myself...? Read that and see if it sounds right to you. ...for so long, for such a long while, so I forced... Even if you fix the grammar the two ideas don't seem to mix. Is it really the time that forces you to forget, or is it something else?
Imagery, very good. Expression, not quite good enough. (even now, looking at it again, I realized you've been gone is also bad. ---character limit, that's enough analysis.

Very nice quote. I can relate it in my own life.