The little purple cursor kept blinking today as I sat down to write.
On.
Off.
On.
Off.
Every appearance felt like the tolling of some enormous bell in the distance, calling me toward something I had spent days avoiding.
Write. End it. Bury it.
My hesitation came from knowing exactly what putting these words down would mean. This would be the last one.
The final page of something that never quite became what it promised to be. The closing of a chapter not only on you, but on the magnificent, terrible cathedral of what could have been.
On Heather.
The asperity of heartbreak was relentless. That first week? Grief had teeth. It followed me into empty rooms. Into showers. Into the driver’s seat. Into the few seconds between waking up and remembering what had happened.
And then, somehow, it became quiet.
Eerily quiet.
For a while, I kept wondering whether I was still happening somewhere in your world.
Whether my name still occasionally appeared uninvited in your mind. Whether some song caught you wrong. Whether you ever reached for your phone before remembering there was nobody left to text. Whether a road, a meal, a stupid joke, the smell of something familiar could still conjure me for even half a second.
It is an impossible question. And perhaps the cruelest part is that there is no answer that would save me.
If you’re miserable, I’ll want to rescue you.
If you’re happy, I’ll wonder how you managed it without me.
If you’re with someone else, some old wound inside me will split open again.
And if you’re alone, I’ll wonder why the phone never rings.
There isn’t much winning in that casino. So I have begun trying not to gamble.
The weekends now have been the hardest. There is a particular kind of silence that arrives when nobody needs you. When the obligations disappear and there is suddenly enough room for every ghost in the house to stretch its legs.
Last night, I tried something different. I went out.
I surrounded myself with newfound company. A small, almost embarrassingly ordinary miracle for someone who had spent so long building his life around another person. I laughed. I spoke. I existed amongst others. For a few hours, I had somewhere to be. Someone to talk to.
People.
And then I drove home. At some traffic light in the darkness, surrounded by crimson tail lamps, I stopped. And in the few seconds before the cars began moving again, something opened inside my head.
A tableau. And this time, instead of fighting it, I let the curtain rise.
The Tableau
The phone rings.
Your name appears on the dashboard. For one impossible second, the entire world narrowed to those letters.
My heart beats once. Twice.
I answer.
You: Hi.
Me: Hi.
A pause.
You: How are you?
I stare through the windshield.
Me: Hurting. You?
Another pause. Longer this time.
You: Same.
There are a thousand things I could say. I choose none of them.
Me: What’s up?
And then your voice breaks. Not gracefully. Not beautifully. It just collapses.
You: I’m sorry. I didn’t know who else to call. Zena had an episode and I’m at the hospital and I’m trying to hold everything together but I can’t. I just… I can’t. I’m sorry for calling you. I’m alone and I’m scared and I haven’t even told Mom and Dad and I don’t know what to do anymore.
For a fraction of a second, every instinct inside me wants to reach through the phone and gather you into my arms. But instead I say:
Me: Damn. That’s awful. Is Zena okay? Tell me everything. What happened?
I don’t think you realize what I did there. On the surface, it was an ordinary sentence. But I constructed it carefully. Almost like an artist.
Because somewhere beneath the panic was the doctor I had watched survive impossible days before. So instead of asking you how scared you were, I asked what happened. I gave you something solid. Symptoms. Timelines. Treatment. Medicine. Facts.
A rope thrown into emotional quicksand. And, just like that, the doctor stepped forward. You explained everything. The episode. What the team had said. What they had decided to do. And eventually:
You: So… yeah. She’s undergoing the infusion now. They started a little while ago.
Me: Okay. That’s good. She’s not reacting to it, is she?
You: No. It’s going fine. It should be about four hours.
Me: Okay. Good.
You: Yeah.
Silence again. Then I ask the question I already know the answer to.
Me: Do you want me to come there?
You: I don’t know.
I smile despite myself. Of course. Even now.
Me: Forget everything for one minute. Forget what happened between us. Forget what you’re supposed to say. Just ask for what you want. I think I’ve proven enough times that I’m not like the douchebags who came before me.
Nothing… Then, very quietly:
You: I want you here.
My eyes close. Just for a second.
Me: Okay. I’ll be there in an hour. I’ll call when I’m at the entrance.
One Hour Later
You open the passenger door. The dome light catches your face for a moment before disappearing again. You climb inside.
You: Thank you for coming.
Me: No problem.
We park in some dark corner of the hospital grounds. And then you turn toward me. And collapse.
You hold me and cry with your entire body, and I hold you exactly the way I used to.
No hesitation. No calculation. No punishment. Just my arms around you while the storm spends itself.
Eventually, we eat something in the car.
How many meals did we eat like this?
How many parking lots became dining rooms?
How many nights did these four doors contain our entire universe?
There was a time when this car was not a car at all. It was home. For both of us. And for a little while, sitting beside you again, I can almost hear the old house breathing.
Eventually, you look at me.
You: I want us to get back together.
I laugh softly. Not because it’s funny. Because somewhere inside me, an older version of myself has just heard the sentence he once would have traded almost anything to hear.
Me: That’s not a good idea.
Your face changes.
You: What? Then why did you come?
I look at you. Really look at you.
Me: I came because you needed someone. Because you were alone. And I know what it feels like to have nobody. I came because I know how much courage it must have taken for you to pick up that phone and call me after everything. I came because kindness is still part of who I am. Because compassion is still part of who I am. Because my capacity for grace did not disappear simply because you hurt me. But neither did my boundaries. And I am not going to amputate the parts of myself I fought this hard to recover. Not even for someone like you.
You recoil slightly.
You: Someone like me? What’s that supposed to mean?
Me: Someone like you. Someone who wants the real thing more badly than she knows how to admit. Someone who wants to be chosen completely. Someone who wants presence and devotion and all those impossible, beautiful things. Maybe that’s the tragedy of us. Maybe it’s the one thing we understood perfectly about each other. We both wanted that kind of love. For a long time, you made me believe you loved me the way I loved you.
Your eyes harden with hurt.
You: But I do.
I nod.
Me: I know you believe that. And maybe you do. But love wasn’t the problem. I don’t think you’re ready for everything love asks of you after it arrives. The honesty. The discomfort. The accountability. The conversations you desperately want to run from. The terrifying, humiliating work of looking at the person you’ve hurt and staying in the room. That’s the part that broke us. And if we got back together tonight, it would feel wonderful. It would feel familiar. Within a week, we’d be laughing like nobody ever left. Within two, we’d be standing over the same wounds with the same knives in our hands. Nothing would have changed except how desperately we missed each other.
You stare at me. I continue.
Me: I think you need to decide whether you are willing to do the kind of work that a relationship demands. Not for me. For yourself. Right now you’re staring at the mountain and thinking only about how impossible the climb looks. You can’t see the pasture on the other side yet. But I can’t carry you over it. Not anymore.
You say nothing. And somehow, your silence hurts less than I imagined it would.
Eventually, I drive you back. The hospital entrance glows ahead of us. You reach for the door.
For a second, neither of us moves. There are entire lifetimes inside that second.
Then I say:
Me: Take care.
You step out. The door closes.
The Tableau Ends
The light changed. A small horn sounded somewhere behind me. And just like that, the entire world I had created disappeared.
No phone call. No hospital. No dark parking lot. No frightened girl climbing into my car. No second chance.
Just crimson tail lights moving forward. So I moved with them. I drove home.
Alone.
Again.
Our love is six feet under,
I can’t help but wonder,
if our grave was watered by the rain,
would roses bloom?— Billie Eilish
~Fin~
