It’s one of those days. The rare occurrence that I am up before sunrise. I stand in the kitchen and watch the sun climb higher. I could stare forever. At the angry, rising mass of fire. Clear skies, pale bands of colour spreading thin across them. A faint glow settling over everything. A perfect morning. The air is cool against my skin. Water runs over my fingers as I hold them under the tap. It slips through the spaces between them, pooling briefly at my palm before disappearing down the drain. I splash my face, the chill lingering, and walk to my room.
It’s been a while. Since I have thought about her. Maybe I have let her go.
I left white roses on the coffin, its surface blackened to a dull, lightless finish. I didn’t wait until it was lowered into the ground. I walked away without turning back. I sit at my desk. The monitor in front of me holds a dim, wavering outline of my reflection, enough to register my presence, not enough to feel real. There is a quiet strength in the sense that everything is by design, but it collides with the knowledge that control is always partial, always slipping at the edges. I wish I had held that version of myself in place, contained her, so I wouldn’t have to let go today.
She ran on minimal sleep. Still made it to her classes on time, everyday. Her path each day was fixed, almost measured. It did not deviate. Days shifted, weeks accumulated, but the route held. The same street. The same shop with the same clothes hanging outside, sun-faded, unmoved for days at a stretch. She would return home. Read. Log into her online classes. Complete her assignments with a steady, unbroken focus. She wrote. She wrote and wrote, pages gathering quietly, until the stagnation settled in and the self-critic began its low, persistent commentary.
She wasn’t juggling. She was balancing, carefully, deliberately. Exams didn’t unsettle her. Even the night before, she found the time to write. Her friends watched with a mix of amusement and quiet doubt, unsure if she would pass, unsure how she managed it at all.
She went from being that version. To someone who sat in front of the iPad, letting one show dissolve into the next, time flattening out, indistinguishable. I pick up a book, read a few pages, then let it fall away. The pull of the screen easier, softer, requiring nothing of me. Late-night silences hold me in place. I began to prefer them. I hated the morning sun on my face. The cheery brightness feels abrasive, almost invasive. It’s too loud. It’s too soon. Five more minutes or maybe five hours. Don’t. Shut up. The noise…
Now I want the old me back. Who am I without her? She was the version of me that felt complete, self-contained, requiring no correction. The ideal one. With her gone, something fundamental has been removed, not visibly, but in a way that alters everything beneath the surface. The loss feels absolute, as if she took with her not just what she was, but what I could be alongside her. There is a hollow. I can’t fill a void.
I want her back. The possessiveness enrages me. How dare she leave me!
How I would look into her eyes, feel the noose tighten under my hands, daring her to try and slip away. Oh she wouldn’t dare. She would stay, convinced it was her decision, that she had chosen to remain. I should have held her in place, kept her from loosening at the edges. She needed containment. A boundary. A structure that would not let her drift. A glass case. A cage. Something. Anything. So she doesn’t slip away.
She was everything. Not in what she did—I have already seen that—but in how completely she held herself together. There was no excess, no visible fracture. She moved through things with a kind of internal alignment I no longer recognise. What she chose, she carried through. What she began, she sustained. There was no negotiation with herself, no quiet collapse behind closed doors. She remained intact. That was her difference.
And still, she slipped away. Through the cracks I did not notice forming. Through the slow accumulation of frustration, of heat, of something constantly pressing against the surface until it gave way. She slipped away.
My coat hangs on a different hook. Slightly off from where my hand expects it to be. I reach for the switch and miss, my fingers grazing the wall before finding it, pressing it down a second too late. I am like the toxic ex. The one who refuses to let go, who has to leave entirely, relocate, disrupt everything familiar just to force distance into something that won’t release its hold. Love broke my heart, so I abandoned the spaces that carried her imprint, every corner too saturated with memory to remain in.
The best version of me stands opposite the present self. Not accusing. Not kind. Just watching. Wildly confused. She looks at the one who forgets to take care of her own skin. The tube sits within reach. I see it. I leave it there. A moment. Then I press a small amount of cream into my palm, spread it across my face without looking, uneven, rushed, missing patches. It dries where it lands. The rest remains untouched.
How did I fall from the best version of myself I could construct, could recognise, could almost believe in,to this. To someone who drags herself out of bed only to return to it, hours later, not from exhaustion but from absence. Days folding in on themselves, reduced to that same cycle. Getting up. Lying down. Letting time pass without resistance.
Oats is ready. Transferred into a bowl, the surface thick, still holding heat. Chia seeds scattered across it, small, dark, uneven. I cut the apple into measured slices, the knife pressing through cleanly, the faint resistance giving way with each downward motion. Sunlight rests on my face, steady, unfiltered. My cheeks warm under it, the heat lingering just enough to be noticed.
I have been grieving her for longer than I admit. The kind of grief that does not announce itself, that settles into routine and stays there. I have wondered, if I got on my knees, begged, cried, howled loud enough to interrupt whatever was written for me, would she return? Would it alter anything at all? Would she rise from the grave and stand before me again, unchanged, as if none of this had already been decided?
I like to think that I finally have a room of one’s own. Virginia Woolf wasn’t kidding when she said you needed one, to write. I am left alone to my devices. The kind of solitude that does not ask anything of me, that allows my mind to stretch without interruption. The freedom to remain inside my own head, undisturbed. To let my thoughts run their full course. To let my heart fill with rage without containment. A kind of independence that feels earned. It feels good to breathe again.
I took the time to acknowledge my past self. I let her remain buried. In the name of “I don’t dwell on my past.” But the more I kept her pushed to the far edges of memory, the more persistent she became. She haunted me. A steady unrelenting presence. A voice that returned at inconvenient moments plagued my mind with quiet contempt. Mockery that did not need to raise its volume to be felt. What a fool I have made of myself.
If she did rise from her grave, the me today would not survive it. I thought she was it. The version I needed. The one to hold on to. She didn’t know any better either. She would have continued along the same path, repeating it, refining it, never questioning its limits. I would have mistaken that for certainty. For stability. I would have underestimated everything beyond it.
The present me is someone I did not anticipate. Someone I would not have recognised then. And when this version of me leaves, it will not be abrupt. It will be a goodbye that is understood, even if it is difficult. Sometimes letting go of a past self is not gentle. It does not resolve itself into something neat. There is no agreement, no closure that feels sufficient. I forced myself to become her again. I couldn’t. I was nowhere near her. She vanished as if she had never occupied me at all. The disrespect. The audacity! To leave me with nothing but the residue.
The discomfort settles over me, dense, unmoving, pressing in without release. Gone. Gone. Gone. She was gone! She’s the figment of my worst fabrication.
The silence that once drowned me now holds me in place long enough to think. I am trying to discover my voice. Do I want to write like Joan Didion or Patti Smith. Where is my voice?
I stare out the window. The sun glares, a little out of my sight. The bowl of oats in my hand. A spoonful. I chew. Swallow. The action feels deliberate, as if I have to register each step to remain present. My feet rest against the cold tile, grounded, unmoving, but my mind drifts elsewhere, just beyond reach, just far enough to lose hold of.
The bowl is lighter in my hand now. I don’t remember how much I’ve eaten. The window is still there. The light hasn’t changed. The water runs again when I turn the tap. I hold my hands under it, watch it pass through my fingers the same way it did this morning. I leave it running a second longer than necessary before turning it off.