Coffee's gone cold again. I keep forgetting to drink it, just sit here looking at your contact name on my phone. Sasha. God, typing it out even makes my chest hurt.
It's been four months since you last messaged. Four months of me speaking to a brick wall, essentially. But I do it anyway because... hell, I don't know why. Perhaps I'm going crazy.
Message sent 2:47 PM
still haven't heard from you. starting to wonder if you blocked me but your mom says no. where the heck are you sasha
I remember when you first told me about the panic attacks. We were in your car in front of that terrible diner. You just started shaking, really violently, and I thought you were having a seizure.
"I can't breathe," you kept saying. "I can't… I can't…"
I didn't know what to do. Felt helpless just sitting there and watching you fall apart. But then you took my hand and squeezed it so hard I was convinced you were going to break my fingers. And somehow that helped. Your breathing slowed, the shaking stopped.
"Sorry," you said afterward. "That was... that was really embarrassing."
"Don't be sorry. Are you okay?"
You laughed but it sounded wrong and hollow. "Define okay."
That was a red flag, I suppose. But I was twenty-two and stupid in love and I thought I could fix everything just by being there. Just by loving you hard enough.
Message sent 11:23 PM dreamed about you last night. we were at the lake house again. you were laughing at something stupid i said. woke up and forgot you were gone for like five seconds. worst five seconds of my life
The lake house. Oh God, we spent so many weekends there. Your uncle's place, the one with the dock that groaned and the bedroom that smelled like mothballs. You hated it but I loved it. Loved how quiet it was, how you'd actually lay down your phone and just.. be there.
Do you remember that night we stayed up all night just talking? You told me your dad walked out on you when you were eight. How your mom cried every day for a month and you thought it was your fault somehow.
"Kids always think it's their fault," you said. "Even when it doesn't make any sense."
"Do you still feel that way?"
"Sometimes. Yeah, sometimes I do."
You were on your back, staring at the ceiling. I was on my side, facing you, memorizing how the moonlight hit your face. You had this freckle below your left eye that I loved. Still do, I guess.
"He just left," you said. "One day he was there, next day he wasn't. No explanation, no goodbye. Just gone."
I should have been listening harder to that. Should have realized you were telling me something about yourself, not about him.
Message sent 6:15 AM your mom called yesterday. says you're alive but won't tell her where you are. she got emotional and hung up. this is so screwed up Sasha
The morning you disappeared, everything was normal. Normal for us, at least. You were quiet but you were always quiet in the mornings. Brewed coffee, kissed me goodbye, said you'd see me later.
"Love you," I said, half asleep.
"Yeah," you said. Not "love you too," just "yeah."
I didn't see anything at the time. Now I read it over and over, searching for whether I missed something. If there was some clue I should've caught.
Your message came in at 3:47 PM. I know this because I've read it perhaps a thousand times.
I can't do this anymore. Don't try to find me. I'm sorry.
That's it. Three sentences and then nothing. Like you just… disappeared.
Message sent 9:52 PM found your notebook in the couch cushions. the blue one with all your sketches. there's a sketch of me asleep that i didn't know you'd done. why didn't you ever show it to me? why didn't you ever say you were hurting this much?
I went by your apartment the next day. Your roommate Jazz answered the door, said you'd packed a bag and left early that morning. Wouldn't say where you'd gone, just you needed to "figure some things out."
Your bedroom looked like you'd left in a hurry. Clothes all over the place, drawers open, your favorite coffee mug still on the nightstand with a ring of mold floating on top.
But what really got me was the photos. All the photos of us at the lake, at your cousin's wedding, that stupid selfie we took at the grocery store, they were face-down on your dresser. Like you couldn't stand to look at them.
"She's been different lately," Jazz said. "Distant. Wouldn't talk about what was wrong."
"Did she say anything about me?"
Jazz looked uncomfortable herself. "She said. she said loving you was killing her. I did not know what she meant."
I still don't know what she meant. How can loving someone kill you? How can something that felt so right to me feel so wrong to you?
Message sent 1:33 AM it's been two months. two months of me acting like everything's okay at work, with my family, with everyone. but i'm dying inside. i'm literally dying and no one can tell
The worst part is how life just... continues. As though you never existed. My friends stopped asking about you after a couple of weeks. My mom stopped leaving those considerate silences in the conversation where she'd mention your name.
The world moved on but I'm stuck in this odd limbo, waiting for you to come back. Waiting for an explanation that might never come.
I've been seeing a therapist. Yeah, I know, you always told me I should. Dr. Morgan is fine but she keeps saying I need to "process" things and I don't know how to process someone just disappearing from your life without warning.
"Abandonment is a kind of trauma," she said to me last week. "It's natural to feel angry."
But I'm not upset. I mean, I am, but that's beside the point. The point is this hollow feeling in my chest, like someone scooped out my insides and left me to walk around empty.
Message sent 4:28 PM saw someone who looked like you at the grocery store today. followed them for three aisles before i realized it wasn't you. the cashier asked if i was okay. lied and said i was
Do you remember our first fight? Oh God, it was just so stupid. You were jealous because I was talking to my ex at a particular party. We shouted at each other for an hour or so, said terrible things. You told me I was naive and I told you that you were paranoid.
But then we made up the way we always did. You showed up at my apartment at 2 AM with Chinese takeout and bloodshot eyes.
"I'm sorry," you said. "I'm so sorry. I don't know why I get like that."
"Like what?"
"Scared. I get scared that you're going to leave."
I pulled you inside, wrapped you in my arms. You were shaking again, the way you did when you had panic attacks.
"I'm not going anywhere," I said. "I'm not going anywhere, okay?"
But you did. You left. And now I see that you weren't scared I was going to leave.. you were scared you were going to leave. And maybe that's exactly what you did.
Message sent 10:47 PM i cant stop thinking about that night you told me about your dad. how he just left without saying goodbye. and now you've gone and done the same thing. did you even notice? or did you do it intentionally?
Three months in, your mom finally returned my call. She was crying before she even said hello.
"She's in a facility," she said to me. "In Colorado. She… she... she tried to hurt herself, sweetie. As soon as she left."
My legs just gave out completely, and I was sitting on my kitchen floor with the phone to my ear.
"Is she okay?"
"She's alive. She's getting help."
"Can I talk to her?"
"She doesn't want to talk to anyone right now. She says she needs to discover who she is without all of us."
"I don't understand," I said.
"Neither do I, baby. Neither do I."
Message sent 7:21 AM your mother told me where you were. i'm not going to go there, don't worry. but i have to let you know that i don't understand why you feel like you have to do this on your own. i need to let you know that i loved you just the way you were I keep asking myself if I overlooked the signs. If I was so blind with my own feelings that I did not realize how bad you were getting. All of those nights when you'd wake up gasping, telling me you'd had a nightmare you could not remember. The way you'd go quiet for hours, looking at nothing.
"I'm fine," you'd tell me when I would ask. "Just tired."
But you weren't fine. You were drowning and I was too busy being in love to throw you a lifeline.
Message sent 11:55 PM i'm trying to forgive you. dr morgan says i need to forgive you for leaving. but how do you forgive someone for saving themselves? how do you forgive someone for doing what they believed they had to do?
It's been six months now. Six months of texting a ghost. Six months of holding on for you to come back to me, to us, to whatever was building between us.
But maybe that's the problem. Maybe we weren't building anything. Maybe I was building and you were just trying to be.
I've been cleaning out my apartment, getting rid of things that remind me of you. Not because I want to forget you, but because I want to remember how to be me without you. It's harder than I thought.
Your hoodie that I slept in. Gone. The coffee mug you bought me looks silly with the cat on it now. Gone. The playlist you made me for my birthday. Still on my phone but can no longer listen to it.
Message sent 3:17 AM i've been thinking about what you said. about not being able to do this anymore. i think i finally understand. you weren't talking about us, were you? you were talking about existing. about being alive. and i'm sorry i wasn't enough to make you want to stay
I ran into your cousin Claire at the coffee shop last week. She looked embarrassed to see me, like she was keeping secrets she shouldn't be keeping.
"How is she?" I asked.
"Better," Claire said. "She's improving."
"Does she ever mention me?"
Claire's face contorted a little bit. "She mentions everyone. But she's not ready to have contact yet."
"Will she ever be?"
"I don't know. I hope so."
I nodded as though that was enough, as though hope was something you could survive on. But hope is exhausting when it's all you have.
Message sent 8:43 PM i'm not gonna text you again after this. it's not healthy for the both of us. but i need you to understand that i understand now. i understand that you left because you love me, not because you don't. and i love you enough to let you go
Message sent 8:47 PM if you ever have to come back, not to us, not to what we were, but just to… existing in the world, i'll be here. maybe not in the same way, maybe no longer waiting, but i'll be here. be good to yourself, Sasha. please be good to yourself
Message sent 8:52 PM i love you. i'll always love you. but i'm gonna try to love me too now. i think that's what you'd want
I put my phone down and make myself dinner. Real dinner, not cereal or old pizza. I call my sister and actually listen when she talks about her kids. I water the plants you bought me that I've been letting die.
Small things. Baby steps to a life that doesn't revolve around your absence.
The coffee is still cold, but I drink it anyway. It tastes like moving on.
Like learning to miss you but not suffocate in it.
Somewhere in Colorado, I hope you're learning the same.
