I had an annoying habit of noticing things. It followed me everywhere, like a bad smell that I couldn’t get rid of which eventually became something I had to learn to live with. What I noticed the most was how people tended to stick around. Not physically, because people are never reliable like that- always inconvenienced by things like commitment issues, boredom, death - people never stayed. Their memory however, stuck like a stench. A layer in your atmosphere. It was as if over time, through every repeated action they took, like breathing, walking, the way they sat on the sofa or the way they chewed their food, they were imprinting their essence onto the fabric of your shared reality. And the better you knew the person, the longer you were exposed to them, the more you absorbed their energy - the more you knew what it felt like, so that after they were gone for whatever reason, they lingered. More than just a memory but not quite a ghost, just clinging to odd things here and there like an echo. Things like jumpers, a particular colour or song. Things like the dent in the wall above the staircase and the scar on your left thigh that shrunk over time but never fully went away. I noticed we never really miss people because they’re not with us anymore, because if they were, we wouldn’t pay them any attention. Just like a pet, who you know and love but generally ignore as they live their little life ambling around your house, minding their business as you mind yours. What we actually miss, is not missing people, not missing pets while we had them. Like your favourite dessert for example. You’re eating it and watching it grow smaller and smaller and you just don’t want it to be over but eventually it is and despite feeling a little disappointed, you know you savoured every bite, so it's okay, and you move on. We don’t miss desserts, but we miss people and we miss pets yet we savour desserts and ignore people and ignore pets until they are no longer with us. And then we’re stuck, reminded of them in a song or colour or dent above a staircase in a wall or a scar on a thigh. We have their jumpers and squeaky toys and even their ashes, but what we don’t have is them, and it’s not okay and we don’t move on. I noticed you need to miss someone while you have them. You need to miss them every second of every minute of every day, as they sit right beside you, holding your hand, stroking your hair, pressed against your body. You need to miss them urgently, achingly, like you’re constantly gasping because of it, savouring it and mourning it all at once no matter whether or not you know how much time you have left with them. But that’s hard. It’s exhausting and anyone with a capacity for that probably couldn’t hold down a job. I fancied living life like that in all honesty, experiencing everything in such violent surges of emotion that I was everything and nothing all at once. I fancied a lot of things that rarely fancied me back though. Missing, it turned out it was just regret. You missed out on savouring a being like you would a cake and now, you get to live with that.
The good thing is, you can sit with the artefacts that bear the imprints of your love, and let them fill you instead.
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