I woke up and you were gone. No, not from my bed sheets, sweat-soaked and crinkled under the combined heat of our bodies. There you always stayed. But from my camera roll, my text messages, from my walls and drawers and email inbox. I cleared you out of every inch of my life, and I packed up what was left (four handwritten cards, each one more cryptic than the next, a polaroid photo — from a night where we look happy but I know ended in tears) into a neat thin black box I slide into the back corner of my desk. I erased you, I had to do it. I had to delete all our photos and all our messages, I had to remove your number from my phone. Just wanted to let you know, I changed my mind about tomorrow. Right now I think it’s best if we don’t speak in person or at all. I had to. Didn’t I?
But now, I wake up three months later and wonder where you are. Memories of you come back in waves, and I take out my thin black box every few days and read the cards you wrote me until my eyes blur. I scour the corners of my desk drawers and photo albums and computer folders for traces of you, tucked away safely from my emotional frenzy. Select, Trash, Recently Deleted, Recover.
There’s a folder on my phone where I’ve hidden the last remaining photos of us, and I find myself flipping through them on purpose, knowing they’ll cause pain. Hurt, hurt, hurt. Tears well in my eyes not just when I hear the songs you introduced me to but when I catch myself alone, in the bathroom, on the subway, without distractions. I’m moving quickly, so quickly, through everything that I have no time to look anywhere but right in front of me. There’s so much demanding my attention and I will happily give it, give all of myself away to the world if it means I don’t have to face losing you. Or you losing me. I’m not sure which one it is anymore.
Is that really the end, forever? I ask my mom, and I think about how crazy it is how someone can be your everything and then one day you wake up and you have no idea, no idea if he stayed in that apartment, if he’s still working that job, if he ended up kissing her, if he ever still misses you. The clothes you bought me are shoved in the corner of my bottom drawer, you told me please don’t throw them out. I won’t wear them but I can’t give them away. You never liked when anything went to waste.
What happens now, how long does this go on for? I ask my friends, for not all of them know the depths of heartbreak. The ones that do look at me gently and say, It takes a long time. My mom tells me she’s proud of me for not re-downloading Hinge and not going on date after date after date after date after date. I tried to replace you and found it both easy and impossible. Easy to find someone else, sure. Impossible to replicate the comfort built between two people, over months, from long car rides and belly aching laughter and morning crosswords and a conversation that began the moment we met and never stopped, not once for nine months.
Will I ever love again? I ask myself mostly, and I smile because you always told me I couldn’t have been more dramatic. It doesn’t hurt in the way that leaves you bedridden and unable to coax yourself into finishing your breakfast. No, it’s duller than that. It just kind of sits beneath the surface and catches me in the in-betweens. In these moments, my mind inevitably drifts back to you, and the tears drip down my cheek slowly. I let them dry, put the thin black box back into her place, and try desperately to turn the page.
Amazing as always. REAL!!!
Thank you for being so raw and open. I loved this.