Inktober 2025 - 30 - Vacant

For obvious reasons, I cannot possibly know what it feels like to have lost a limb. But if I were to go out on one, I would say it might be a little like this.

I reach for him in the morning. And he's not there, which, for just a second, gives me that mini heart attack, the kind you get when you thought there was still a step on stairs but you've actually reached the last one. After that, I either get up in a sweat, like after a very bad nightmare, or bury my face in my pillow to scream and cry. Actually, no, sometimes I also just stare at the ceiling for an undetermined length of time.

I still talk to him, too. Out loud. I mean, I used to talk to myself out loud before I met him, so that's not exactly weird for me, but I didn't use to expect an answer, before. Now, I do. I'll be watching some movie, and something very stupid happens, and I'll say "Can you believe this?". And then, I turn, and he's not there. And it hits me like a ton of bricks. Not like the little twinge of disappointment that I would get when he had gone to the loo without my noticing, or when I had forgotten he was out with friends or on a work trip. The notion that he's not coming back is simply gruelling. It's never going to smell like him again. I'm never going to get to hear his ideas or advice. Not in this lifetime, anyway.

The worst and dumbest part about it is that I can totally survive without him. I did it before I met him, so there is no reason I can't now. There is no absolute need for him in my life. I was not dependent on him in any way. Not financially, not physically, not even emotionally. When you have a recognised handicap, at least there is a reference for you to know that something is wrong. You deviate from the norm. So, when you feel down about your situation – which is in no way a fatality but can happen, I guess –, you can at least hang onto the idea that you are actually incomplete, that something is indeed missing for you to function optimally, that this is not the limited means a human body is supposed to thrive on, so struggling is justified. But what kind of ungrateful person complains about having known epic love? What sort of bougie problem is that to have? Some people never experience it at all, ever. Having lost it means you have had it at one point, which should be seen as amazing in itself. And it is. And I do try to hang onto the memories of the good times. But there is this giant hole in my life that just cannot be filled back up, and I hate it just as much as I loved him.