The Shadow of Her
Article by Anonymous, art by Koli Razafindandy
I am obsessed with your ex. And it’s not because I have any real vested interest in her—she lives in a different state, I’ve never met her, and if things go to plan I never will—it’s just that you have loved her, perhaps you still do, and that is too painful to bear. Thinking of you as you were in high school inevitably leads me to think of her. She is the thread that runs through every one of your stories from home, and this is the poison that has slowly been building in my bloodstream. I know you must dream of her because of the way I still dream about the people I’ve left behind, and that fills me with unspoken emotion. One might call it anger, but it has no one to settle blame on, so it sways uselessly in my chest, manifesting feverish rage back on myself. In your dreams, does she tell you how I obsess over her? Does she moan about my omnipresence? Does her presence detract from my beauty? Does seeing her make you wish you’d stayed with her?
Just before you and I started spending a lot of time kissing and rolling around together, you lied to me. You said you and her had broken up a few months ago. That’s what you said but you knew it wasn’t true. Did you say that just so you could have me? Was it because you didn’t yet imagine me fully human? It isn’t fair that I must carry around the knowledge that you were still recovering from her, from four fucking years of her, when I agreed to be yours. It had been what, a week, since she called you and said it was time to let go? You told me she broke up with you, and not the other way around, to assure me I didn’t cause your breakup. I wasn’t asking because I felt guilty, I was asking because I wanted you to tell me I was better, that she didn’t matter. I wanted you to tell me you broke up because the relationship had run its course, and nothing she could say would get you to take her back.
It was so convenient once I found out about your ex to panic about her. Better that than thinking about the way I was falling violently, drastically in love for the first time. The first few times she reached out to you it hurt me so much. I think now you must hide it from me if she still contacts you. That or you two truly don’t talk, but I can’t believe you because I am not the trusting woman I might have been in a different life. Regardless, it felt like relief to long for evidence of her—that painting you did of the two of you on a hike, the playlists you made with her in mind, and the songs off them that you later sent to me, the photos of embraces like when you first left for college—rather than to reckon with how I was feeling. So, I focused in, and I’m not sure I’ve gotten over my obsession, even after this whole year has passed. And I’m sorry, because I know you want me not to worry and not to bring it up—but she is in some way a defining part of us. And I’m so fucking afraid of her breaking us, or my obsession doing the work for her.
Sometimes I wish I was her. I could have grown up in your hometown, played your sport, been exactly what you needed me to be. We could have been high school sweethearts, destined to be together until death, with abundant inside jokes and memories and nicknames and peace. Of course, we have some of those things, but we can’t have them all. I don’t want to resent her for that, or you, but I wish she didn’t have such a claim on your past. I want to be the only one with a right to your comfort—how terrible is that?
Thinking about your ex leaves a hot pain in my rib cage. I dig my fingers into it again and again, trying to staunch the bleeding. But it’s no use, because like the bone that God took from Adam, she leaves a rot in my body that makes me overprotective and embarrassing. I am causing myself pain and anxiety and I wish I could stop but I can’t. Thinking of her feels like shame and ugliness and haunting. It feels like I am unworthy of you, like I don’t have a right to know you, or like I am at the very edge of a cliff, and she’s at the bottom of the ravine telling me to jump down and talk to her. Maybe if I got to know her, we’d get along so well that I couldn’t hate her? My brain wants to pour over her, to understand why she let you go and to see if she wants you back. You just want to move on from her, and it’s the twisted irony of this obsession that I won’t allow that to happen.
It feels awful to write this. You have hurt me by not giving yourself more time, and I have hurt you by resenting that. The worst part is that I don’t want to admit to some of it–don’t I deserve to be with someone who was fully committed to the relationship from the beginning? And yet, I feel guilty as well to be writing this. We are the happiest we have ever been, and my jealousy is the creeping disease that drives us toward destruction. My writing must be selfish, as well—I am the unreliable narrator of an English critic’s dreams—because I can only say what feels meaningful to me. I can’t do you justice, no matter what I write. I’m sorry for the way this can only hurt you more.
The reality of being a person who is depressed is that a lot of the time I don’t feel very much at all. You made me feel fireworks. You made me feel like I was back on Splash Mountain as a child, about to go down the big hill, staring at the spikes around the waterway and being convinced I would die right there in that silly log. You made me gasp and spasm and see. I needed a proxy, a distraction from the fear I felt about relationships in the past and she—and all the details you’ve let slip about her—have been exactly what has taken its place. I need you to stop telling me things about your relationship with her, but I don’t want you to. Let me self-destruct. I long to cry; let me break us down and let me drown at the bottom of the sweet honey of the love we have built.
I am not sure why I feel the need to share this. I assume I’m somewhat normal, or that jealousy is just a fatal flaw that I must battle… but you should know that it isn’t everything to me. I focus when I can on how you make me feel, rather than the shadow of her that haunts me when I am at my most anxious. Love doesn’t feel all-encompassing and alarming to me like it did at the beginning, but rather like a soft bed I can climb into at the end of a long day in the cold. I desperately want to find safety in myself, too, and through new rituals of rest and friendship, I have started to feel that. Of course, my fear still lives in me, but deep warmth and care is bubbling up to overtake it. She is just a woman who taught you some lessons and kept your heart safe until it could come to me.
I just wish you had never lied. I wish that getting over her wasn’t more difficult than you expected. But mostly I just wish I could stop thinking about it.