For M.

Fiction

I opened our conversations for the first time in a year. I cried. I laughed. I let my body absorb all the pain, resentment, and sadness I’ve felt. I counted the times you said you missed me. Reread your witty remarks. Skimmed through the music you like. Stopped at your messages from June.

Your father had passed. You took the long way back home on your motorcycle and found him unresponsive. You’d taken care of him for two decades after his skiing accident. You’d just ended a ten year long relationship with the woman you thought you’d marry. You’d lost friends over the breakup. Now you’d lost the person you loved the most.

Everything happened so suddenly. You became hostile, blamed me, and made the choice for the both of us by walking away. This heartbreak reminded me of the years I felt small. I was too cautious, boring, quiet. The type who’s admired for a little bit and forgotten. Someone once told me what he called a hard truth: “Honestly, you have a lot of great qualities. But you’ll always be the last choice for men.” I didn’t respond. A part of me still believes him.

I did everything I could. I was there for you every hour you needed me, even putting aside work to check up on you. I shared vulnerable moments I was terrified to. I gifted my positivity, sang for you, encouraged you to pick up drawing again, and said how I felt for a man for the first time in my life.

But nothing I did and nothing I’ve ever done has been enough to keep people around. “I won’t leave you.” “You’re amazing.” “I adore you.” These words are said like deals made with God when you’re desperate and promise you’ll change in hopes of receiving what you want, knowing damn well you won’t change a thing.

Words have intent. It’s why I’m careful with mine. It’s why when I express to you what the church taught me to repress from the time I was a little girl, I expect you to nurture my words. To understand I mean what I say. That I can’t live in a world where I abandon people just because of my insecurities.

Count your mistakes. Count mine. We’re the same. We’re unsure of who we will be. Of what will happen to us. I’ve loved people more than God has loved me. I sense their damage. The repairs that must be made but can’t because it’s so incredibly hard to be human. To let go of constraints, fears, people, and possessions.

You were hurting. I hope you’ve healed. Life isn’t fair. We’re aging. We can’t catch a break. But between unbearable moments are these beautiful, tiny fragments of joy. We find them in random people we meet, events, miracles. Please hold on to these. Yes, everything will leave. But why shouldn’t we stick around to see what happens instead of pushing it away before it all ends?

I remember you when I hear a soothing, slow-paced voice that assures me the wind will be gentle. I see you when someone slicks back their hair and wears a leather jacket. They hold their drink and stare intently at it. I pass by fragrances at the mall and smell your cologne. Woody, earthy.

I waited for you. I’m still waiting. If you reached out now, I’d still respond. This is my flaw. That I hold on to what I shouldn’t. That someone can break me, yet I can’t help but feel what they bear and how I’d react the same way. I don’t know how to loosen my grip and accept there’s nothing there. What we had is gone.

You mourned. Now it’s my turn. How do I do this? I’m smiling. I’m explaining I’m okay. But the awful truth is that there are nights I pray I won’t wake up. That I’ll pass peacefully in my bed like he did. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I can’t work. I’m pretending. For the students I teach. For family. For friends I love. For strangers who tell me I brighten their day.

I have no one to speak to. I choose not to. I’d rather hunch over in a corner on the floor, weeping while I respond to messages and ask how others are than admit I’m hurting. I’m hiding. Please, please comfort me. When I withdraw, please reach out to me. Stand behind my locked door so I know someone is here.

Grief is quiet. It’s zoning out in the middle of an hour-long meeting, not knowing where you are or what was said. Grief is ugly. It’s burning your meal on the stove, breaking dishes, crying while you smell blood drip down your hand and realize how very alive you are. Grief is spontaneous. It’s playing board games with laughter, then breaking down in a friend’s guest bathroom, smelling a vanilla candle on their counter as you wash off snot and prepare to step back out. As if nothing happened.

You shared how you couldn’t quit cigarettes even though you hated the scent. It’s because your father smoked all your life. Smoking was comforting. Even the day he died, he lit one with you. This is how I feel about okra. The texture makes me gag the second it meets the roof of my mouth. But I still eat it. Because it was his favorite food. It’s the closest I can be to him minus photos.

I miss you. Time can’t seem to correct this for me. Sometimes I feel pathetic about telling you how meaningful your presence was. How you were a stranger who came at the perfect time in the most random and perfect way. How I became a hopeless romantic because of you. How I spent most of my days daydreaming of how we could be together, relying on delusions. Then, I remind myself I’m brave.

I finally opened the cage I had built. I let myself feel. I gave myself permission to express the depths of my self-consciousness. I allowed myself to accept care. I felt something I’m afraid I’ll never feel again. And for that, I’m grateful. I will carry this as I’ve carried all things. With anxiety, desperation, passion, compassion, anger, happiness.

Emotions are a whirlpool. The things we do under pressure, during pleasure, amid suffering, because of loneliness. The way we treat others. How easily we forget. How slowly we forgive. How a person who never touched you can leave a handprint on your skin. How a person you lived with for twenty years can become an acquaintance. How harsh we are with ourselves when we should be delicate.

I once tried to fix you. I realized I couldn’t because I can’t even fix myself. I spend my free time collecting people’s hardships. Listening to every story from abuse to a sense of unworthiness. The commonality is that each person wants to be understood. To help you accept that their struggle is special and can’t be fathomed. Even while they’re yelling at you over the call, telling you what a useless listener you are, they want this one thing. For you to understand.

I’m sorry for not accepting that you’re your own person. That you won’t behave or think as I do. That you have a right to be exactly as you want to. My over-trying and expectations caused harm. There are times, as I’m now learning, that we cannot find a place for our grief. It eats us until it becomes visible. Until someone you barely know reaches out to say, “I know you’re not doing well.” And, shocked, you tell them, “Really? I thought I was doing a good job at hiding it.”

People know. For as much as they might not, they do. Most just don’t tell you. Even while you’re pouring wounds into your art, saying it came from a place outside of you, people know that somewhere in that one speck of your creation, who you truly are was threaded.

“How can you tell?” you asked once when I said your heart is kind. Because I see you. How you paused before delivering a tender critique. How you took time to decorate your words in ways I’d feel safe. How you were late for work because you found an injured stray cat by a road. How you helped raise your niece after your sister’s boyfriend abandoned them.

There’s a contradiction in life. We’re taught to embrace what we feel. But we’re also taught to detach. How can an aching person feel everything at once and set it free? How can hours, months, years of getting to know someone all be crammed in a bottle and dropped in the ocean to disappear? I need to replace you. I compare. I’m disappointed. The conversations are surface-level. Tell me something deranged. Show me a poem that’s shaped you. Ask me why I’m stuck in my head, and I’ll ask you the same.

I wonder if you’ve thought of me. How you perceive me. I’m not the same person I was two years ago when we met. I choose rejection over silence. I give people long hugs. I’m more patient. I’m less self-critical. But my heart is the same. I see a child cry, and my eyes soften. I see a man who reminds me of you, broken, unable to figure out who he is, and I comfort him. I hold an elderly woman’s hand who whispers my name after I introduce myself, and I’m reminded of how anything in life, including me, will fade.

I’m not ready for today. I’m scared to pray. I’m not ready for tomorrow. What if this calmness I feel right now is momentary? What if I close my eyes, and it’s the end of the year? I haven’t done all I’ve set out to do. I’m racing, but only my thoughts are running. It’s all too much. But I want to endure this chaos inside me. Because this is all I have. My words. My intense feelings. Life is meant to be messy, uncertain. There won’t always be answers. And maybe I’m finally learning to respect this while also learning how to move on from you.

Yours truly,

K.