KarlieCol

2 apartments

1 dog

A million moments

That’s what is left now. And it sucks. And I’m heartbroken. And I don’t know how to move on without my best friend and my partner. I don’t know how to just pretend I’m fine and make plans to move and spend our days like we always spend them. But the alternative is caving to the despair and not being able to function.

So I dissociate for most of the day. And I take a lot of pictures of my dog. And I savor the last moments that feel normal and make me happy.

And then I go to bed and it all comes crashing down. And I drug myself to sleep. And I wake up in the morning thinking it was all a really bad fucking dream just to wake up and get hit with the realization that this is actually my life and the person I love most in the world doesn’t love me anymore. But I get out of bed because my dog is waiting for me to give her a morning treat and only have 30-something more mornings to do that for her. And I make my coffee and do my routine and rinse/repeat.

Until one day soon I’ll be in a different apartment in a different city with no dog and no best friend and there won’t be a reason for me to get up in the morning or to pretend everything is normal. It will just be me. Alone. Trying to figure out who I am at 34 alone when I’ve been building a life with someone since I was 27.

I find myself begging him to still be in my life. To not forget me. And that is what I want. I want us to be able to still be the people we are together. But I’m also terrified that I’ll never stop being sad. I’m not sure how to mourn someone who’s still around. But the alternative is to go without and that’s not something I’m willing to accept.

A podcast I listened to said to go 30 days no contact to reset the wires in your brain - to chemically withdraw so you can process and build new pathways with your new routines and reality. But I don’t think I’m strong enough to do that. To not talk to my support system for 30 days. To not see my dog for 30 days. To not talk to the person I love for 30 days. He’s the only person I want to talk to when I’m hurting, even if he’s the one who hurt me.

And I don’t even have a reason to get angry. Not really. I can be mad he didn’t do what he promised. I can be mad he’s not giving me a chance, not giving us a chance, to figure out what broke. I can easily be mad at all of that. But I can’t seem to really be mad at him. I’m not sure if that would be easier or harder, to be honest.

Every day since Friday has felt like a countdown to the last day of my life. I feel like this must be what it would feel like if you knew you were going to die on April first and all you could do was soak up every moment between now and then. I know that’s a little dramatic but it feels more accurate than anything else I’ve come up with.

Being asked to say goodbye to your life, your partner, the future you planned, the city you’ve lived in for 12 years, and your dog all at once is cruel and I’m not sure how to come back from this.

How do you come back from losing the person who taught you what stability was? Who taught you what real love felt like? Who showed you that a home can be filled with laughter and love and not fighting and secrets and anger. Who showed you what it feels like to be taken care of. Who loved you loudly when you were too scared to admit it.

How do I think about him loving someone else the way he loved me - especially when I don’t feel like I was given the opportunity to even know something was wrong. How do I think about them laughing at jokes and silly voices and dumb nicknames and playing games and making fun of our dog. How can I think about someone else living with and loving my dog? And my dog omg my dog. How can I think about her getting old and slowing down and having to say goodbye without me there. She’s going to be so confused when I leave one day and never come home. She’s going to think I abandoned her and that I didn’t love her. That almost hurts me the most because I can’t explain it to her. I’d take 10x the hurt if I could just explain to her what’s happening so she’s not left confused and without me in her life.