50mm
I don't love you anymore
The first year I was away from home, I thought distance was nonexistent. I felt that, like time, you would always recognize it was there, but never be able to measure it. It would be something abstract. I thought moving away was nothing more than opening up a new chapter of a book. But it was nothing like that.
The first month I spent in this new city was foggy. My camera lenses were always blurry. It was always raining. I wanted coffee one morning and had no idea where to go. I spent four weeks trying to figure out which grocery store near me was the best. Every single time I got on the bus, I cried.
My hands were always empty. I missed my siblings more than I cared to admit. Distance, then, became an experience. It was not something outside of me. It existed within me. The alienation had managed to take root in my body, and I would look at it in the mirror and see vacancy. No sign of the organs once tangled inside my stomach. No sign of my ribs, or the bony outline of my spine. No indication of the blood veins running along my arm.
I’ve been here for two years now and I have my favorite coffee spots. I know where they use the best oat milk. I know when the trains roll by every morning, and how far away they are. I see the outline of my hips, the framing of my stature. I make marks on the wall every time I come back to my dorm after accomplishing something new, something exciting. There’s a star sticker on my wall from the first time I got my heart broken during midterm season and I use an old photo as a bookmark.
Life is durable now. I can finally sleep without getting nightmares. And if they do come back, I hug my stuffed animals a little tighter and turn on the dim yellow lights tacked on my wall, and then it’s not so bad. I’ve turned loneliness into solitude, I think.
The other day I was walking past a sign on someone’s storefront and caught sight of myself. I made myself laugh. I have big cheeks that turn red in the cold, and I wear pink gloves that don’t really fit me anymore but I keep them because I bought them with my roommate last winter.
My therapist said that the goal is to reparent myself. That’s all adulting is — just learning how to take care of yourself.
Life is good and slow and quiet. My mind is not a terrible place to live in anymore. I don’t have nightmares as often. I eat well and take care of myself. I brush my teeth, take myself to bed, remind myself to sleep. My life is good. It treats me well. It makes me happy. I haven’t been achingly depressed for almost an entire season.
Some days, things get heavy. Some days, I don’t want to hold everything up alone. The stress is burdensome. I wish I wouldn’t have to carry so much of it. And I know I should let things flow, and trust myself more, but I’m so hard on myself when it comes to certain things. I know I have to learn how to hold all the weight. I know I have to let go of the weight that I don’t need to carry.
I make coffee and oatmeal in the morning. I listen to songs that don’t make me cry. I have good friends. I can read good books. I make myself laugh. I make myself happy. Life is not so bad when you have these things.
I know all the hard days will one day amount to something. It takes 365 days to get to one singular moment. I will choose to be grateful for all 365 days nonetheless. The sun keeps coming up. I see a lot of birds in the mornings. I get to keep doing the things I love; things I’m good at. I’m trying and doing my best, and I think that matters.
It’s been five months since I stuck that star sticker on my wall. I realized that the person I loved was a little like the Sunday morning before your new job. I woke up and he was gone, but I still had my big girl job to look forward to. He doesn’t know that I still have that star sticker up there because his absence is a reason to get off the floor.
I know that he’s rearranging his life a little more. I know there are entirely new memories I’ll never hear him talk about. I know that he’ll never again get to hear me talk about my career aspirations and the jokes my sister makes in her car.
I’ll be twenty in a few months. I’ll have to rearrange my life again. Pack up new boxes and get rid of things all over again. I have a cat and I poured all my leftover love onto her and I’m making space in my room for when she gets to come live with me. I have a spot on the bed I’m saving for her, the way I used to save a spot in my room for him.
There are some people that I once believed would always stick around who have gone with the wind. One of them, in particular, saw what my life was like in the city before I moved out alone. Does he still remember my janky elevator? The signs taped to the wall? The pencil-drawn cartoon figure on the elevator doors? I wonder if he remembers the signs as we drove back to my hometown. Does he remember the casino before we reached a shopping mall? The gas station sign before getting on the highway? Does he remember the first song I played that was secretly always about him?
I was once seventeen and afraid to say ‘I love you.’ Then, I turned nineteen and I was afraid of hearing it back. In the last five months, I’ve been scared of saying that I don’t love him anymore. If I did, then it’s over. He’s gone. My shoes have been filled, the door has been closed. I didn’t want to let go. I thought I wasn’t ready to.
His birthday is coming up and I won’t wonder what he must be doing. I don’t think he loves me anymore. That doesn’t hurt to say.
When I go back home and I walk in and see the same space, still riddled with his hands, it won’t hurt me to say it either. I don’t love you anymore. I feel like the apartment itself will be thankful I’ve finally whispered it. The walls have seen the way I cried, both beside him and when he was gone.
I’ll draw the blinds and the window will be open and his scent will wash out. I’ll walk into the kitchen and make myself a coffee and there will be a silent sigh of relief because now I have a coffee recipe he doesn’t know by heart.
I’ll listen to songs in my sister’s car and won’t look out the window thinking about all the times they were the background of the slow ache in my heart. I’ll get drunk and won’t cry, and I’ll erase all the last little things I have of him. And I’ll be fine, because I don’t love him anymore, and it doesn’t scare me to admit it.
I drank wine with my uncle for the first time a few months ago. I thought it was some symbolic gesture that proved I was older, and not the same little girl he used to babysit. When I was three, he was twelve. He used to help me ride around my mom’s parents' house in Mexico the first time my mom thought of leaving my dad.
I drank two bottles of wine and made everybody in the room laugh. The night after that, we went to a restaurant and he fed me some of his food. He lifted the spoon and I leaned in and I remembered that no matter how old I get, he’ll still see me as the same little girl.
I drank with my friend’s mom the day after New Year's and she said there was something different about me. I looked older, but I was more mature. We talked about my major and the things I was studying. I drank until my mom had to help me throw up in the bathroom. Even then, I was still a little girl.
I used to be scared of playing grown-up. I was afraid of signing up for internships because I thought I was merely roleplaying. But none of that matters, I think, because maybe all adults feel that way. Maybe it’s because there will always be someone out there who will look at us and see how young we really are.
In those moments, the world didn’t feel so big anymore. Not so heavy. When I slept with my mom again in December, cradled below her arm and holding onto her torso, I felt nine. The world didn’t feel so scary then either.
What I’m trying to say is that the world will always feel a little big, a little heavy, and a little lonely, but one day you make use of the big space and fill it with time and memories and people, and then it’s a little disorienting. Maybe that’s why they say time heals all. It's because it allows you to fill that space.
I let the rain in. I let the time pass. I kept filling up the space. I don’t hate the city anymore, but now I think I’ve outgrown it.
Isn’t that strange? One day, you think you’re too small, and then before you know it, you’ve outgrown the very thing that used to scare you.
I managed to finish this only because this dropped and it made all my thoughts click in an instant. Thank you Role Model!