Disconnected: When Love Actually Dies

You say you’ll never forget them. And then you do.

Chauncey Zalkin
Nov 6 · 3 min read

The memory and pain of a love lost abides. The bond and bitterness, especially if it was toxic in any way (or mysterious and unfinished, either one), are hard to shake off. I’m in the thick of it now after a four year roller coaster with a Jekyll and Hyde who’s moved on to anything and everything right away as he promised he would: “I’ll just move on right away,” he threatened — and so he did I learned, running into him at a concert, me alone, him on a Bumble date weeks after parting. Cue the meltdown.

The memories aren’t just there, they envelop me. They don’t leave me alone. They are me.

For the time being.

There’s an ex out there I mourned for years and thought for a long while was ‘the one that got away’ but I can barely remember him now let alone imagine that I considered a life in his tableau of friends, family, and hang-ups. I oddly remember a smell of him that isn’t pleasant and I have another memory of him that is as unsentimental as it gets: that he taught me the value of wiping windows with newspaper to get a streak free finish. (Try it!) That is almost all that’s left of a heartbreak that rerouted the direction of my life (for the better).

There’s no emotional attachment. No more than there is to the deli guy in an old neighborhood. (Maybe less, as those deli guys are there for you when you need salt and vinegar potato chips and a chat at 3am. I often hug my old deli guys when I find myself back under their lotto signs and rows of condoms.)

I remember once when I was mourning this particular lost love, I went to get a hair cut and as his assistant wrapped a towel around my neck, I instantly began to choke back tears because the towel smelled so strongly of “ALL”, the detergent my ex-boyfriend used. I could barely stand being inside my skin because of the raw, seemingly relentless grief that oozed and stung at the slightest touch.

But now, all I remember is the memory of remembering — not the actual man. And definitely not any kind of ‘us’. It’s like we never had any connection or really even any business knowing one another. I don’t belong in his life and he doesn’t belong in mine. I struggle to see him in my mind’s eye as anything other than the thumbnail that occasionally pops up on LinkedIn in the ‘other people you may know’ section.


The query of a novel I wrote in the aftermath of losing him begins “It’s said that the cells in our bodies renew themselves every seven years” and yes, these cells a couple ‘sevens’ later are unfamiliar with the cells that knew his. These cells are in another space time continuum with no threads to him. I am a new person head to toe and I imagine so is he.

I don’t know if that fact makes me happy or just neutral but it definitely makes me free. If you’re agonizing over someone that is gone, ask your future self the question: ‘where are we now and were we ever here?’ It may hold you close with a knowing peace you are not yet ready to feel.

Chauncey Zalkin

Written by

writer, creativity coach, and storyteller guiding and creating content for brands. You can find me at www.chaunceyzalkin.com and www.slcontentstudio.com

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