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Stay

leaving just doesn't work.

By Nat Published 10 months ago 3 min read
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Stay
Photo by Andreea Popa on Unsplash

You don’t have a home until you leave it, and you can never return when you left it. Back then I swore I was gonna marry him someday. In another universe, Timing would have been kinder to us. I wouldn’t freeze up whenever someone mentions his name or Brooklyn. That is something grief doesn’t cover. He is still stuck at 17, and I keep growing older.

No one tells you what to do when that happens. I wouldn’t have made it without him holding my hand. Before he died, I hope I died first cause I don’t want to live without him. Is this the end he had for me? I spoke to him the day he died. I knew something wasn’t right. I should have told someone. There was nothing left here. All of our best years are behind us. What a brutal way to die. I’ve seen this film before and didn’t like the ending. He’s not my home anymore. So what am I defending now? I want to talk about what has happened but I don’t know how. Most days I just want everyone to know that I wish I died first. I didn’t know how to breathe without him. I don’t know how to break that curse.

Leaving didn’t change my pain, I was just farther away now. I wasn’t down the street from where he died I was a six-hour plane ride away. The only thing that has changed was the weather and the time difference. I still have that panic deep inside of me. My heart still hurts the same. Seventeen-year-olds just don’t get shot like that. I have a lot of regret about the way that I handled everything. I kept thinking that He was never going to graduate or get married and I did graduate I think that day broke my heart more than the rest.

I still have a hard time comprehending that he isn’t going to come back and nothing I can do will change that. I hate how everybody just expects me to bounce back just like that. I know it’s for the better that I didn’t grow up with him and he’s not in my waiting room. He had to go, I know. Like a wave that crashed and melted on the shore. Not even the burnouts are out here anymore. I left a part of me back in New York. I knew the hero died so what’s the movie for? It still hurts underneath my scars from when they pulled me apart. He knew the password so I let him in the door. Everyone knows he won so what’s the point in keeping score? no one knows how much I miss him. I try not to think about it but of course, that never seems to work. If I don’t think about it then it did not really happen. I know it sounds like a cliche but I think that a part of me died that day. I don’t feel the same anymore. I feel different.

I didn’t choose New York, I dreamed of getting out. He was the one who could have made me stay. Brooklyn is too cold now and all of my friends have left. He wasn’t as mean as people made him out to be. I don’t remember him that way. I know how they blame me. I damned if I leave and I’m damned if I don’t. I’ve spent a lot of time wondering what leaving will do anymore. I didn’t change anything. He is still dead. Nothing I did could have changed that.

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About the Creator

Nat

She/her/hers

writing about adoption, mental health, and chronic Illness.

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