I'm not sure why I thought about it. There was no obvious trigger. It wasn't the anniversary. Nothing happened to remind me of those days and weeks and months. I hadn't talked to you. I haven't seen you in nearly half a year.
But it all came flooding back.
Memory is tricky. The mind's capacity to ignore that which once tested it amazes me. Did I consciously choose to block that time period, or was it an unconscious defense mechanism? Did I really forget, or did I just ignore?
I remember the day that I moved out.
I asked you for two things before I left, two final requests to end the relationship I once hoped would last forever. I asked that you please do your best to separate your things from mine, so that packing would be easier. I asked that you not be at the apartment that Saturday, that you disappear while I tried to cleave my life from yours, while my heart broke completely in two.
You did nothing to honor the first request.
You made plans to leave. You woke up that morning and got ready. I asked if you were really going to leave without bothering to try to clean your stuff up, without trying to make this easier for me. You yelled at me. You cursed at me. You stormed out, you told me that I was getting what I'd asked for, that you were leaving.
The door slammed.
I stood in the middle of the living room, packing tape drooping in my left hand.
My shoulders collapsed.
I sank to the floor, and I sobbed.
I got through the rest of the day. I held it together. That evening, I went to buy sheets and a comforter and a laundry hamper. The laundry hamper seems so absurd a purchase now, but it seemed so necessary that night.
I walked home, up Columbus on a cool Saturday night in early June. I was OK until I got to 74th St.
I realized I'd forgotten to buy a pillow. And that I'd forgotten to take a pillow with me during the move that day.
And I began to cry.
I called you, because places selling pillows were all closed by then, and I was so used to reaching out to you when I needed someone to fix things, to fix me, to hold me.
You didn't answer. In a moment of insanity, I decided to drop by the apartment, for which I still had keys, and get my pillow.
You were asleep.
The front door was chained.
My heart broke all over again. You arrived at the door. Through tears, I choked out something about not having a pillow. You returned a second later with my pillow, unchaining the door and handing it to me. I cried.
You reached out and held me to your chest, kissed my forehead.
I turned and walked away.
I forgot the nights that followed. I forgot the falling asleep easy, then waking up at 2 or 3am and being unable to fall back to sleep.
When I slept through the night for the first time two months later, my co-workers and I celebrated.
You told me that you hated me. You told me that I was responsible for you being a horrible person, for being an asshole. You told me it was the worst relationship of your life.
And we've come so far now. We're in such a better place. We like each other as people again. There is no hatred, no animosity, no anger.
Some might say we're better now than we were when we started.
But part of me still mourns what once was, and what I once hoped for. Do you?
