I’ve left a little piece of me to die with everyone I no longer know. It’s been the hardest feeling I’ve come to terms with in this lifetime, and probably the next. There are dead pieces of everything all around me. Pieces of myself that I miss, pieces of people I loved, pieces of memories I can still feel, pieces of hurt that I carry in my pockets.
Every so often I visit the graveyards. I grieve my people and all of the places I’ve been with them. I mourn all of the bridges I burned because of the girl I used to be, the attitude I used to own, the emotions I used as a weapon. I visit and I hurt myself by imagining a world where all of these things were still alive.
Here lies a girl I knew once:
There’s this theory that with every decision you make, a part of you breaks off and continues in the other direction - creating an infinitely long line of different pathways in life. Many of mine lay here. A version of me who got that one job and left that place, a version of me who got married a little bit young and a little bit naive, a version of me who was maybe a better friend, a version of me who was maybe a better daughter, a version of me who didn’t make it to 24.
In this graveyard the grass is tall and unkempt, weeds grow in between the headstones. Nobody visits except for me, on days like today. In this graveyard there are ghosts, and that is why I don’t come here often. I fear they will follow me home.
Others I wish I could dig up. The version of me who loved to be loved, the version of me who painted more and drank less, the version of me who was gentler to this version of me.
Every time I can’t remember my personal style, or my favourite movies, or stand up for myself, there’s this tiny piece of me that goes to live here as I betray her. Is it death, or shedding skin?
To loving you: in this life and in the next:
I think if I had more than one life I would look for you in them all. Even if I knew it would end like this. I think I would try to find you even just for a day.
I don’t think I’d know it was you. I think a song would start playing on the radio and it would be more like an instinct to look for you. Or maybe I’d be at a bar in the next life, and the bartender would serve that last drop of yellow, bottom shelf tequila and I would look around for you.
Or we’d bump into each other in the sunshine again and it would be just like the first time. I’d love it if it was like the first time. The first time was really nice.
But instead I sit in the graveyard of all the people I loved and lost and I know that there is no second or third life. And think it’s so crazy that we can know each other in one year and not in the next. And how I can not forget your middle name or that picture of you as a kid, and how Halloween passed and the costume we talked about stayed trapped in my Pinterest board.
I’ll keep a photo of you in the back pocket of my life from here on out, and I will look for you in everyone.
Here lies the person I wished you could be, he’s right here with you.
We were girls together:
It is always raining here.
Some who lay here I lost without noticing. Suddenly, it had been years and I forgot your birthday and we moved to different towns and you have a boyfriend now and we grew apart. I never notice until I go back. Until I weaved through the spaces and saw your name, I didn’t even realize you were gone. Does that make me a horrible person?
What’s worse, losing someone by accident or by purpose? Looking back to see nobody’s hanging on anymore or seeing someone wiggle themselves free?
I think the saddest part to me is knowing how many in this graveyard are better off without me. I watch their lives like their ghost, admiring their diligence in moving on. I think it’s always hard to realize you’re not the best person for someone. And then after that, loving them enough to know it’s got to end. And loving yourself enough to know it’s got to end.
Some people here rest easy. I don’t miss them and they don’t miss me. Regardless of the sleepovers we shared and the words that we whispered and the shirt that you kept because it looks better on you anyways.
And others, and I can barely look at face on. Others exist not only here, but in the tattoos on my skin and the music in my head. They exist in the friends that I have now, and the trust I lay down. They exist in the algorithm I tried to block them from online, they exist in my family and in the summer homes I left my favourite bikinis in. They exist in so many happy photos, and memories, and feelings. They’re ghosts that follow me out of the graveyard and home to bed.
These ones lay in fresh soil. I can never keep them down. The second I get better I reopen the wound. It’s a yearning like no other. It’s the feeling of missing someone so deeply that when they lay to rest, I almost am right there with them.
I feel bad for boys. They won’t ever get to feel true, girl friendship love. But I feel bad for girls too. Because we have big, big graveyards.
"I wrote a poem about it, and then threw it away, because that's the last thing I need right now: More words dedicated to people who will never dedicate a single thing to me."
- Charlotte Green
It’s a slight burden to write; and to write and share it with the world. For one, it says: “here I am, still thinking about you after all this time.” And for two, it’s horrible work to open up healed wounds and dissect them for insight. There’s something absolutely humiliating about imagining someone reading this and thinking “my god, she’s writing this about me!” And, whether I am or not, it’s a small burden to let people assume things about me, even if they’re not so favourable.
And still, here’s 5 years of work, dedicated to people who’ll probably never know they’re on my mind.
All this to say getting older is a cruel test of friendship and love. It’s an intense reminder to love the person, love the person in the moment, love the person in the moment for as long as you can. And to hold on tight. And to let go gracefully. And to move on steadily. And to revisit honestly.
WOW!
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