Complete erasure

To everyone I used to know – but don’t know anymore. I never said goodbye to you, because I didn’t think I needed to.

The thought of you crosses my mind. I pace around the room and picture plans of what we’re going to do together. I collect things I want to tell you in my phone notes app.

I talk about you to others all the time.

You’re still here, but just existing in the blurred edges of my peripheral vision.

But then one day someone mentions your name.

“Oh, did you hear the news?” they’d ask, as if I already know.

I sink. And just like that the illusion of me being in your life shatters. And for the first ever time, I see it.

There was a life with you. And then there was a life after. Without me.

All this time I was living in a world where you were only temporarily out of sight. Until I realised you’ve been living a whole entire life and I am permanently out of sight. Complete erasure, as if I never existed in the first place.

Key life events, days or months, years and milestones have come and gone. You are this whole new person and have a whole new life. There is a new version of you that I will never know.

“That’s great news,” as the words scrape against the back of my throat.

I make it home. I begin pacing the room and picturing. Opening my phone notes app and entering item 401 of the thing I want to tell you.

And just like that, you’re back tucked away into the blurred edges of my peripheral vision.

Sometimes the hardest goodbye is the one you never actually say, because saying it means admitting the person has built a life that no longer includes you.