Far worse than a death

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————————————————Revised 9/25

Time has stopped since you left.
Not in any grand way like shattered clocks or cinematic pauses—
just small, quiet stillness in objects 
juxtaposed against the maddening screams of all this pain within me.

Besides objects, memories are frozen like us walking at the park, but I also mourn future trips like our dogs hanging at the dog park. Think Lucy, Glacier, or __ will win? 

The paint cans sit unopened--the shades of purple you helped me chose for mountains on my wall you said you’d help me paint,
waiting for hands that never started.
My walls, bare and waiting, just like I was. Am. 

Concert tickets stuck in a portal, unmoved, for GGD July, row 10. I told you this, but this is how excited I was.... how excited I was to get us tickets to our fav group: I took the day off work to go to the box office to get the best available seats, even. First in line. I bought us row ten tickets. The closest ones possible. Fucking expensive but worth every penny to hang out with my buddy. 

Maybe I'll get lucky and you'll still go. I doubt it. But will you please?

An Airbnb reservation from last year for the coolest place ever near Eureka, still unused, that we said we'd still honor as friends alone for your bday. What will I ever do with that? It's NOT for anyone else.

A giant list of places to eat, see, travel to. 

The book I meant to lend you
still waits, its pages pressed together,
holding in words you’ll never borrow.

175 memes and reels in a collection on my instagram and Facebook accounts. I still save something almost daily. Hoping to send them someday soon because this is all just a lie and this isn’t really happening. Right? 

The photo of us—One of us at Chappell on my dresser And then the one that got me through now the second hardest year I’ve ever lived—still sits in my phone. The one the made me smile and laugh now brings me to tears. Was this friendship all a lie? How is my closest friend here gone? 

And the plant you gave me still leans your way, yes toward your house. Because we both know plants feel their person, 

and even it is asking and begging you to stay.

Going to see Meet Me In the Good Light as soon as it hits the screen here.

A card you wrote me, still on my nightstand, but I don’t open it. 

Video messages and texts I’ll never erase but I’ll also never reread except for when I'm three shots into a whisky bottle. They’re too painful now. And even more painful? A million conversations we haven’t had yet but would about life, time, space, the cosmos, family, friends, travel, the world. 

Remember the video message you sent me last June? About how excited you were to have me close to do things like brunch and errands with? I saved it on my phone.

But how did it get to this? How are you okay with doing this to me? This completely blindsided me. 

It’s so not fair. It was so so so fast. So haste. How it it my fault that I sent a nice text and it blew into the end. How did a kind text fuck me over?

I had no idea you’d ever do this to me in any lifetime. I can’t believe you’d do this. I can’t even believe this is true. Is real. 

Poems sitting still now hidden away or on unpublished or your doc I shared w/ you where I wrote about how things like we talked about being 80 and reminiscing about things while sitting in the creek and running to target. 

Remember that one? 

We are supposed to to grow old here together. 

That’s what you promised. 

That's what I promised. 

And I don't get rid of friends. 

And you don't either.

So I don't get why you're hurting me/letting me hurt so much without doing what normal friends do--discuss and find common ground and not let things be like this.

This is not okay. And I don't believe for one second you are doing this.

I moved here believing, knowing, we were friends forever with myriads of adventures in us as we talked about so many times.

You promised.

You fucking promised you'd always be my friend.

And I told you in person and in poems I never sent you that it didn’t matter if we were together or friends forever. Did you read those? There were tons of them. TONS. They all said how I’d be happy no matter what, friends or romantic partners, it did not matter either way. Why? because you’re just that wonderful. And that has never changed. For some reason you think I think something else from poems I never sent you and never was going to where my mind was free to imagine all things. 

But you're not in my head and you've never once asked how I feel about what happened or what I'm thinking or what is true or validated my kindness I extended in that text. Nothing. I feel so unheard. So not understood. So incredibly hurt. This enneagram 4 needs to be heard. Understood. Believed.

“People heal the moment they are and feel heard.” 

I just want our friendship to be real and not gone forever. I want to know that I mean something. 

Because right now I can’t believe any of this happened and that it now meant nothing. 

I'll never believe this is real.

😭😭😭😭😭😭 

Because it is so so so hurtful what you did. Took words I never shared with you, and never was going to, and turned this into the end. 

I remember how you’d told me your father’s things stood still for years after he was gone—Still are. Awaiting as if he would walk in your door at any moment.
And I wonder—how long before you’ll return instead of continuing with this ending.

Awaiting as if you'll call me, come see me, meet me for brunch...

at any moment.

Now my life does the same as those objects in your house and the ones in mine… they stand still. 

But… the objects do not feel. 

They have no sinews, marrow, heart. 
But I do and You’re alive. 

You’re not dead. 

Yet this is far far far worse than a death. 

Death is finite.

This is a space that I can't define in any human terms of the finite and infinite, but I know this: I scream out in pain every night, stop breathing for moments at a time, crying myself to sleep.

EVERY FUCKING NIGHT.

If you were here, if you'd said any of this to my face, 

if you'd look me in my eyes, 

you'd never have done this.

I'll never believe you could.

But you did it this way anyways. 

Why?

How?

How on earth?

You don’t have to do this. 

So why do it?
Why put me through this?

What did I ever do to deserve this? In any of my life ever?
Nothing. 

I'm not perfect but I am a very very good and kind person. I try so hard to be perfect. So hard.

Won’t you please have compassion and empathy and hold me and our friendship in regard? 

Because those things aren't present. It's like you took them all away. It’s like everything you said you were and I knew you to be aren't. 

Time has stopped and it shouldn’t. 

My heart is shattered, and it shouldn't be. 

Don’t do this. 

It’s too too hard. You have no idea how hard. I was already 6ft under with losing my job and this just buried me even more in grief and sadness. 

Time has stopped. 

So please don’t let it be forever. 

But time is running out. 

It's never promised.

I wonder—how long before you’ll return instead of continuing with this ending.

Awaiting as if you'll call me, come see me, meet me for brunch...

at any moment.

Nightmare

My life is a fucking nightmare. 

I he a few days of reset. Respite. 

Then back to 6 ft under.

When will I ever find peace? 

When will I ever find good? 

Everyone I love leaves. 

Hurts me. 

Lies. 

Gaslights. 

Fill in the blank. 

Everyone I love tries to kill me. 

And I wish they would. 

I wish they would have. 

Bookends

So today the new Taylor Swift album came out

and I felt my stomach split open—

because the last time,

the night before her last release,

you dropped me like a song cut mid-verse,

sentences flooding my phone

until there was nothing left but silence.

This evening, I sat parked

in the exact same spot,

the same cracked pavement beneath me,

the same ghosts buzzing in my chest—

and the memory of you,

fingers on your screen,

spelling the end of us

in a barrage I couldn’t stop reading that fateful March day. Fuck you for trying to kill me when I was already 6 feet under and dying inside. How could you do this? How did you do it? You’ve got a lot of balls. 

It’s strange how places

don’t stay neutral—

how they turn into grave markers,

like bookends for a story

that barely had a middle,

just a beginning I replay,

and an ending that still burns my throat.

Now every song sounds like you,

every lyric claws at the bruise

you left across my ribcage.

The timing—

the timing—

it makes me paranoid,

like lightning could strike twice,

like the universe would dare to echo

the day I lost my friend.

And here I am,

pinned between two albums,

two release days,

two places that won’t stop bleeding—

bookends that close on me

every time I try

to shelve you away.Erase every painful thought of endings. Of losing you not once but twice. 

All I can’t say

I wish I could call you. 

Text you. 

I could. 

You’ll ignore me like always. 

But you don’t really. 

I saw you on my IG stories a few weeks ago.

Maybe you think I’m posting about you? 

I am. 

Maybe. 

Guess you’ll never know. 

Why do you still care but don’t care? 

I don’t get it. 

You’re the one who left. 

You’re the one who said have a nice life Amy. 

You’re the one who hates me. 

Andrea Gibson says Is my attention on loving, or is my attention on who isn't loving me?

And to that I say yes. I love. But I also think daily about why you hate me. 

I’m a shitty person. I get it. 

But come on. Am I beyond grace? Empathy? Anything kind? 

And I wish I could text you this: 

Today let’s take a girls trip to see Chapell this weekend so I don’t have to go alone. 

We can drink and eat and drink and laugh and dance and scream Pink Pony Club and Good Luck Babe  at the top of our lungs. 

But instead I call my ex Sammi who would never go and talk to her 2 kids and dream of summer break after retirement. 

I dream of concerts. But dream alone. 

I’ll go alone. 

I’ll always be alone. 

I don’t want to be in this life without you. 

I don’t.