Dear Sammy,

It has only been 8 days since we have gone no contact, but it truly feels like an entire lifetime. The weather this week has been wet and soggy, appropriately matched to the way I’ve been feeling without moments of contact with you throughout the day. One might think it would be easier to go no contact with a person you’ve gone no contact with before – with a person you lived 22 years without ever knowing. It is the contrary, for me. The longer I’ve known you, the harder it has become to imagine what my life was like before you were in it. I truly do not feel like my life began until I met you. I genuinely believe I did not know what raw and consistent happiness was until you came into my life.

That’s the thing about joy though; I experienced the most ecstatic, euphoric moments with you, which is what made the more challenging moments – and the moments without you – feel so achingly painful; it truly is like a rollercoaster. I daydream back to a night in Summerville around 11 p.m. with one of those summer storms carrying rolling thunder and a torrential downpour across the sky. I think of us running outside, gripping one another’s hands, and jumping up and down, barefoot, into puddles as we became soaked with the downpour. I think of our fervent spring back into Frogmoor, tearing off our clothing that felt glued to our bodies, and melting into a hot shower together, washing each other’s backs with arms tangled around one another, getting into cuddly clothes, and drinking hot tea together, giggling at the foolishness of it all – of us together – at how deliriously happy something like jumping around in the rain could make us.

I daydream back to the smell of linen throughout our sunny home while I cleaned, and vacuumed, and dusted, and mopped the floor, finding an inappropriate amount of joy at categorizing all of our trinkets we collected from our travels and the thrift stores. I think of finding the ring you purchased when I was filing away one of your items, of creeping back to the nightstand door to try it on while you were away at work, looking at the beauty of it dazzling on my ring finger, anxious to say yes. Anxious for you to ask me to spend forever with you – something I believed I was already living at that point - living in forever with you.

I have to pinch myself out of that memory, to remind myself of what it felt like when I arrived ‘home’ from Manhattan. The entire trip away, I was craving home – wanting to be reunited with you, the girls, the smell of the lowcountry. Outside of the airport, the feeling that something was wrong when I saw you struck me instantly. I remember brushing it off, knowing I hadn’t slept very long, knowing I’d had a touch too much wine to drink with Nick, but I couldn’t shake the sense that something had shifted. After letting it rest, I remember bringing it up in the living room. You moved to another couch, as far away as you could be from me while still holding our conversation, you told me you didn’t love me anymore, you told me I was the most negative person you knew, you told me to go “home” to my mother. I felt gutted and defeated. I love you more than I love my own self, so I didn’t fight it. I promised to pack my things and to go.

I had to wait a couple of weeks since I had an important doctor’s appointment. We slept in separate beds, talking minimally. It felt so unusual – this place we once shared that felt as though it was both of ours felt solely like yours – like I was a visitor in your space. I still fell into my comforting habits of straightening up. When I set your Apple watch on its charger and saw the face light up with verification codes from Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble, everything clicked. I packed my bags and went to my appointment, and you admit everything to me over text. When I came home, you held onto my legs and cried and cried. I stayed strong for a moment until crying, too. “I don’t understand,” I kept crying, before dragging myself into the car and making the three and a half hour drive to mom’s house. I did not know – did not think it was possible – that things would get worse after that point.

I still miss you. There is at least one thing (usually more) that reminds me of you each day. It depends on the day whether I feel lucky for having known a love like yours, or whether I grieve it – for knowing it wasn’t as real to you, for knowing I will probably never find it again. I wish I could be angrier with you. - Gracie