You’re Dead to Me, But I Wish You Weren’t
You’re in my life, and then, in the blink of an eye, you’re gone.
Grief is easier to understand when a person dies than when they disappear. It’s relatively simple to grasp that a human heart has beat its final rhythm, a set of lungs sucked in their last breath of air. Death means a person, at least in their physical form, no longer exists on this earth. There’s no wondering where they are, how they’re doing, or who they’re with. They’re gone in the most literal sense; not just gone from your life, but from everyone’s.
I lost someone too, but not in the way we normally perceive loss. I left my spouse after five years together. We shared everything — a life intertwined. I’ve never missed someone so much and still, even one year later, I struggle to comprehend why I’ll never be able to see him again, much less say all this.
I’ve seen you exactly four times since I moved out. Once was on your birthday, when we had dinner at Whole Foods and you begged for me not to give up on us. Another was when I came to pick up the boxes of my belongings. You screamed at me as I walked out the door of our condo for the last time.
Months passed, and I rushed forward through life. Eager to forget, eager to move on. Eventually, whole days would pass by where I didn’t think of you or wonder how you were doing. Then suddenly you’d reappear in some form — your picture on a screen, a twin car in the parking lot, your old t-shirt wadded in the back of my drawers — each a sharp stab to the gut reminding me of everything I’d done, of the damage I’d caused.
Then one night, I ran by you on the street. It was dark, and I didn’t realize it was you until after we’d passed one another. Did you see me? Did you stop and look back? I didn’t. I kept running. I ran as fast as I’ve ever run in my life, too afraid to face you and the fallout of my decisions. It was too soon, I thought. You wouldn’t have found a new life or a new love yet. You wouldn’t have realized I was right about leaving and that you’d be so much happier in the end.
Skip forward fourteen months later, and now, I’m ready to know. I want to hear how you’re doing, where you are, what work is like, how your family is doing. What’s next for you?
The last I saw you was a week before I moved to Korea. You were driving, rolling up to a stop sign with an arm slung out the window, leaning back into the headrest, looking utterly miserable. Another stab to the gut.
It’s been two months since I moved away and I realize I’ll almost certainly never see you again. Some weeks I’ll forget “us” entirely, memories fading enough to believe our life together was nothing more than a dream. Did those five years really happen? Did you really exist? Those moments of forgetting are blissful freedom, the only time I don’t wonder how you’re doing. But it’s an ignorant bliss, glossing over the grief that still seeps to the surface when I pause long enough to let it.
Today, you appear as flashes in my mind or on a screen in moments that are as unexpected as they are filled with emotion — the ache of nostalgia… and quiet, simple grief. I flip through Instagram stories and see you in a mutual friends’ photo. Your grin is there as big as ever, and suddenly everything rushes back, all the memories of five years replaying in hyper-speed.
Just when I was beginning to forget, it’s a cruel reminder: even though it feels like you died, you’re very much alive. Somewhere on this planet, but in your own universe, choosing not to be connected to mine.
When you’re the leaver, no one tells you there will be grief, but it’ll come for you eventually. When all communications cease. When you’re finished dividing belongings, selling the house you bought together, splitting bank accounts. It’ll find you in the moments you slow down enough to realize the person you were closest to in the world is entirely and irrevocably removed from your life, all because of the choices you made.
It has been there all along, I imagine. Grief. Buried under the layers of guilt and shame with which I’ve become so well acquainted over the past three years. Guilt for wanting more, for leaving, for giving up on us, for falling out of love, and most of all, for breaking your heart.
One year later and I thought I had finally processed it all, finally dissected and digested all the remorse for how things turned out. I said I’m sorry one last time and I said a final farewell. That’s when it settled in. The kind of grief that sneaks up slowly at first — late at night, a small pit in your stomach that grows and aches and gnaws. At first, you place it as loneliness, that well-known feeling that something or someone is missing. And something is missing, because you, my best friend in the world, are gone from my life forever.
Our romantic relationship was over, I was certain of that and still am. But I never wanted to lose you altogether, and that’s how it feels — the end of a relationship; a distant cousin of death. Death, with its sheer finality, offers closure. It’s harder to comprehend that although you’ve disappeared into the ether, you’re still very much alive. Out there somewhere in the world, living a life in which I no longer get to be a part of, not even as a casual, distant observer.
So I’m left in a quiet room to face the fears I had from the very beginning, the ones that kept me bound in an unfulfilling relationship to being with: Who do I share my dreams and uncertainties and successes with? Who do I call when my mom tells me she has cancer? And how do I know if you’re happy, or whether I made the right choice?
At this very moment, you could be on a golf course, or behind a computer at work, or maybe on the phone with your parents, or yelling at the TV when the Seahawks lose on a last-minute hail mary. My brain struggles to process this, how your life and a million more run on seamlessly, as I live in my own little bubble five-thousand miles away. And as much as I want to talk to you now, to know that you’re doing alright, your departure from my world was so sudden, so stark, that I can’t imagine actually seeing you in real life, resurrected.
I’ve been trying to move on — to run away from our past and escape the inevitable pain of coping with a bitter divorce, coping with coping with losing my partner. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t outrun the inevitable reality that you are embedded in my life’s story. You are an indelible imprint on my memory and my soul. Forgetting is impossible. What we had is and will always be a part of who I am; memories I will cherish, new perspectives on my priorities in life, and lessons learned about honesty, communication, and commitment that will distinctly shape my future relationships.
Instead of moving on, instead of putting the past in the past, I’ve found that moving through the chaos and pain and uncertainty is the only way to acknowledge and pay respect to the years of time, effort, and emotion poured into our relationship.
Embrace the grief bubbling to the surface. Stop running. Turn and face it and thrust yourself headlong into the hurt and fear and regret and shame. Talk about it. Stop hiding the fact that you were married and things changed, and maybe you fucked up, but it happened and you did the best you could at the time. Take the good, the bad, the ugly, and appreciate that another person is now woven irrevocably into the fabric of your being.
Forgive yourself, forgive the other person. Grieve for the love you lost, but smile because you had it to begin with, and that can never be taken away.
