Gray.

I wasn’t thinking much of anything that day. I had resigned myself to the decision that I had nothing much to think about at all. I was in my new townhome in a new state where everything was gray. Unlike my previous home, where everything was also gray, all cracks, signs of age, or outdated Art Deco were hidden by billboards and bright lights. The gray here was natural — and it was everywhere — the sky, the trees, the squirrels, even the sky.

It felt like nothing.

I fumbled with the miniblinds and stared out my kitchen window at the barren trees, whose sinewy beauty was overshadowed by the orange glare of the Auto Zone sign behind them. A cop stood out on Main Street directing traffic, which consisted of precisely four cars by the time I stopped counting. I felt a low level of impressed that not one of those drivers flipped him off. Cars parked along the outside of my building had plates from New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, oh, and Connecticut, where I was.

It felt like nowhere.

My path to Danbury from Manhattan wasn’t one for the annals of glory but more for the annals of impulsive decisions people make after their first year of sobriety. But there I stood in a quiet little town with a not-so-quiet little cat nudging my ankle for treats. “Different city, same cat,” I laughed, patting Hemingway’s little brown head. “Different city, same girl?” I mused as he sucked the Greenies up from the floor. I looked out another window and caught a glimpse of a mural of Frida Kahlo, and I felt a slight shock of belonging, that my people were here somewhere.

It felt like a start.

A start was what I needed; up until that point in the year, all I had were ends: the end of what Gen Z calls a situationship, the end of a job due to mismanagement resulting in layoffs, and the end of my life in Manhattan. All of them were the proper ends, but they all happened with such quickness and impulsivity in their varying states that it was hard for me to determine where to go next, and I never stopped to grieve one.

It felt like a failure.

I gripped my soup mug of coffee and wandered to the living room, surveying more gray out the windows during my short journey. I found my cozy divot on my couch and settled in to begin my morning. Perhaps I would take care of correspondence, my fancy way of saying I’d reply to emails. Instead, I found myself distracted by the frayed edges of the couch where the other cat–the loveable fatty Esther–had scratched, something I never noticed before the move. Something else perhaps that the garish lights of my old home obfuscated. Everything was familiar, but nothing was the same.

It felt like a nightmare.

I was 49 years old, and I had no idea what my life was or what my life was going to be. I recognized the privilege of this home. But fear doesn’t give a fuck about privilege. My body was shaking, perhaps from too much Nespresso and Celsius but more likely from the hangman’s noose of uncertainty. I was alone, unemployed, freshly single, and too many miles from many close friends.

It felt like unrest.

It was a day like any other day until it wasn’t. I went into my office with its black sheer curtains covering miniblinds covering window tint to keep the blaring sun from overheating my third floor. While I was technically unemployed, I had consulting work to keep the benefits going and the cat treats flowing, so I went to it for as many hours and as few as I could.

It felt like progress.

I made my way down the stairs, playing chicken with the cats as they tried to get underfoot, and gave them their supper. I heated my usual leftovers and sat back in the divot on my couch, ready to click to find a new horror movie to watch. Something I did every night in New York, but somehow, suddenly, nothing felt like a right fit for viewing.

It felt like loneliness.

I munched my pasta and stared at the small yellow box on my phone. The Bumble app, which my new hair stylist convinced me to download, glared back at me. I had set up my profile, but I had such a dating app aversion despite knowing of so many success stories personally. “You don’t shop for people,” I’d say as a way to eschew. But, deep down, I knew my biggest fear was rejection or no match existing for me at all.

It felt like now or never.

I tapped on the app and opened it to see what men or women might be matches for me, nearly choking on noodles when my first match turned out to be the man in the couple I had recently called it off with. I paused to text my friends, “I swiped left so hard I almost needed a new phone,” and went to the next. I saw a sweet smile. An average man of 43, whose looks did not match my type, but something about his face made me want to know more. His personal hell was self-described as “dating apps.” I swiped right. I replied that we shared the same hell.

It felt optimistic.

Within minutes, we were messaging on the app. Short messages and quips on Bumble quickly became lengthy intellectual dissections on text about the trauma that horror movies can heal, how we’d both rather be alone than be with the wrong partner, about how well we seemed to mesh in what we presented as who we were and what we wanted. “Someone to be the rock when we can’t.” And his prose; his prose was a symphony.

It felt like a crush.

He was a single father. His time was limited, but he wanted to spend what he could talking with me and ultimately meeting me. Dream woman. Head over heels. He was punching above his weight. On our first date, he was nervous because he showed up fitter than he was in his pictures; he could’ve shown up looking like anything, and I would’ve loved him from the start. I did.

It felt like a promise.

Cajoled by friends to honestly give him a chance after I tried to nitpick meaningless, superficial attributes to protect myself from hurt, I kept seeing him. In a short time, maps were made, and plans were laid. Feelings were strong, silence was comfortable, and everything was easy. Time was the only thing that wasn’t easy, and that took a lot of communication due to his custody situation, but it was never a deal breaker. One of his biggest draws was how dedicated he was to his child.

It felt real.

I couldn’t pinpoint the exact day, but the gray started to appear again. It wasn’t because anything was fundamentally wrong, but there were communication gaps and issues with timing that made our intimacy hard. “I feel like I’ve lost myself, like I am having a nervous breakdown,” he said, after facing some surprise pressures with his ex and his work. He started to distance himself. Dream woman became someone he felt he had to manage, despite my assurances he did not. Head over heels became overwritten with head over toilet due to his unmanaged anxiety. I started to cling and beg. I was losing myself.

It felt like terror.

I didn’t want to lose what we had. I wanted us to find our paths back to health and our joint path back to ease and grace. I made a mistake that many do in that situation; first, I pushed too hard and then pulled away too fast. He had a refusal to go back to therapy because he felt like it would be like moving backward, and I was too scared of losing him to say that therapy was a tool that grows with you as you face new challenges — a silence I will likely never forgive myself for as long as I live.

It felt like an impasse.

Weeks went on. We managed through, but in the newness of the relationship, the grandeur was gone, despite the intimacy in sharing essential parts of our life progressing — his childhood, my childhood, what scared us about life, how we were happy to have each other to lean on because we’d never had this before. The love was powerful, and I felt his love so strongly, but I faced another entity in our relationship I could not battle: his anxiety. It came out when he talked in circles, almost to himself; it came out when he took the tiniest things not even about him and self-flagellated and made assumptions about me and decisions for me.

It felt ironic.

Having been treated for severe anxiety for most of my adult life, I knew what it was like to be the anxious one and to create the self-fulfilling prophecy I was watching him create for us, and I wished I could take away his self-hurt. This was a horror movie I did not want to watch or want him to live. I wished I could scream at him from the other side of his mirror that he was a good man, a good father, a good worker, and a good human, that I loved him. But his anxiety refused to let him see that for himself, and he refused to take on his anxiety, so nothing I did or said mattered. He began an entranced waltz with this mental demoness, with me screaming between their ghostly arms, but neither could hear me. She didn’t want to hear me. She made me the enemy.

It felt like heartbreak.

In the end, it was the anxiety that he chose. I couldn’t entirely blame him; it was the energy he’d had the longest relationship with and it never left him, even if it caused him harm, he knew how to exist in that darkness. He didn’t know how to exist in the light. I worked so hard to now live in the light, and I tried so hard to bring him light, but no light bearer could hold such burden, and no light bearer could also be the recipient of the intended love. And that also added a burden.

It felt like witnessing a murder.

The morning after he chose her, that minx of the mind, over me, I wailed. I wailed for days. I still wail, though the wailing is sometimes interrupted by catatonic states that leave me almost breathless. If it wasn’t for those underfoot cats and their treat-nagging needs, I could’ve died many times sitting in that spot the last few weeks. “Wailing Catatonia,” I dryly commented, “That will be my next profile name.” If ever another profile at all. I couldn’t imagine.

It felt like rusty metal through soft flesh.

I slowly started to get back into my habits. I threw myself into my divination and mediumship studies and did Oscar-worthy social media performances, trying to show how “okay” I was. That occasionally slipped into how very not okay I wasn’t; how very not okay I am. I reached out to friends for help and shared directly how not okay I was; how very not okay I still am. I fashioned an antique-looking writer’s room to further nest in my new home and kickstart passion projects. I placed pink roses all around. I added to my altar.

It felt like nowhere.

It was a short romance but the most meaningful I’ve had in my 50 years of living. I’d never been so sure of anything in my life. Deep down, in both my body and soul parts I now know how to access, I am still sure. But his anxiety mistress still exists, and I am not one to sit idly by watching my love be destroyed by his own brain. He will find someone who will, but it won’t be love. I think he’s resigned himself to that.

It felt like a betrayal.

I sit alone again, where the ghosts of the key players are on display — the mapmakers, the plan drawers, the beast of anxiety, the elated me, the sad me, the empowered him, the hunched him, the love, the love, the love, the love, the fucking love. I look out my window, and the trees are no longer barren but lush. The squirrels still bandy about but among bright flowers. And the Auto Zone, while primarily hidden by the now green trees, still glimmers orange fringe. Yet, in my mind, it all still translates to gray. The gray of newness and fear and the gray of the heart’s void now converge. Not even garish city lights could hide it if they existed here.

I continue to search my way back to that time of unknowing of what was to come, but I’m forever changed by what did.

It feels like nothing.