“Not ‘goodbye’, only ‘see you later.’”
There’s a special way that my brain works; a flaw of sorts, perhaps. Only three people that have come into contact with me are aware of it. It’s a sort of obsession, something to be paid attention to because if attention is on it, that means a bit more safety. The switch in my brain that is always ‘on’ is an acute awareness of the dates of things, a painful alertness. April 27th: my brother’s death. May 11th: my birthdate. May 25th: my grandma’s death. 14 days between each one. April 11th: the day he broke up with me the first time. July 7th: the day he broke up with me, but without rectification two hours later this time. A phone call to my mom, packed bags on the staircase, his stepdad asking “What happened?”...ask F.
Joan Didion, in her essay “Goodbye to All That”, ( taken from Slouching Towards Bethlehem), writes: “...one of the mixed blessings of being twenty and twenty-one and even twenty-three is the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened to anyone before.” In this essay, she writes of New York. F was my New York. And my Chicago. And my Elmwood Park, my Oak Park too. He was the moment of waking up in the morning and realizing where you were - a place where anything was possible. Yes, New York City has touched my eyes; yes, feeling his body weight next to mine would be my choice every time. But Didion is right when she says that it feels like “nothing like this” has happened before - the interpretation my mind is choosing is that of falling in love, and the complete despair of heartbreak, standing in an airport with bags full of souvenirs from happier times when New York City streets were in front of your eyes, crowds of unimpressed people and those with gazes packed with amazement alike. Both are something my heart is all too familiar with.
July 12th, 2019. He texts me his phone number, we’re at work. Little did we know that 2 years, 11 months, and 28 days later, we’d be arranging for me to pick my things up from where we lived together. “You could’ve let me know you were on your way.” It’s a shame that we didn’t know then what we know now. So much changed in those years. But a few weeks prior was when it all began. Sometime in June, his hand in mine “Hi, I’m F.”, (in my head: oh you’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever laid eyes upon), “Nice to meet you, I’m Carlotta. Are you a Pisces by chance?”. Leave it to me to ask something like that, huh? My guess was correct.
July 7th, 2022. The details will stay with me forever, and they will die with me alone. A thousand deaths have occurred in my brain already, one for each time this day has played in my brain once more. There’s nothing too big to sacrifice for me to make it stop. The weeks before are permanent trauma. Crying in our bedroom, fingers interlocked, elbows on our bed (the one we bought that beautiful September day…) - praying to God, (begging him really), to not take him away from me. I can’t do this. I can’t do this. He’s all that I know, he’s all I want to know. Please don’t do this to me, I’ll do anything, be anything. He went to the garage and left me alone. “I’m sorry, Carlotta.” Closing our bedroom door behind him, our jackets brushing against my face, me standing there watching him turn the lefthand corner down the stairs we’d climbed together every night. Drunken stumbles, quiet giggles “Shh, the parents are sleeping!”, Happy Birthday pretty girl, “What would you think about moving in?”. My death happened in that phone call. Something in me snapped and it’s never come back. It probably never will. Maybe it’s dramatic and you’re going to read this and think “You’re so young, of course it feels that way”, but my great-grandmother died from a broken heart, and stranger things have run in families. My dad’s right eyebrow has a mysterious slit through it, and guess who does too?
The next few months are a blur. Not much has stuck in my memory from the months of July-October, except for one day in July when the decision to end my life became a reality. My cousin spent a good few hours on the phone with me. July 19th. Beyond that, though, all that sticks out in my mind is panic attacks and getting absolutely wasted, crying with my face planted on the bathroom floor in the apartment absent of his scent, a soul-crushing realization after days of wondering what was missing when all of the boxes were there. (His cologne, the smell of his skin, and the feeling of his fingertips still permeate my brain, even after months of another man’s presence. It was always F, even then.) The suicide hotline made callbacks to me a lot, their voicemails clogged my inbox. At some point, you have to laugh.
July 29th, 2022. The last time we saw each other. Another story that gets to stay between us forever. He looked like he’d barely slept. It’s a guarantee that my mind got far less rest than his did. 5 hours a night if it was allowed. Him looking around at my empty apartment, tears in his eyes. We both know what he was thinking: “You did it”. That’s not how it was supposed to happen, though. He was supposed to be there, right beside me, even if we didn’t move in here together. He was supposed to help me put up the curtains, and call me at night, just like New York. We were supposed to have sleepovers, him using my apartment as a getaway for when his parents were fighting again because Lord knows that was a constant. He was supposed to be here. It’s weird not having you around. The understatement of the year on my part. “My family loves you”. I loved them too. Convincing myself that it was all in the past tense because somehow that made it hurt less in the moment. And then he was walking out of my front door. Somehow, the urge to follow him out subsided at the moment. It was funny how his facial hair was growing in again, after years of me trying to convince him to keep it because it made him look how he did when we met. That was the first thing out of my mouth after he left and my mom called. It was the thing that made her say “Do you want me to come and get you?” He asked if he could write me a letter one day, you can guess what my response was. There’s an unanswered text sent from my phone sitting in his phone right now. (My bed is still our bed.) As he left, my mouth made out the words “goodbye”. His response: “See you later”. In a rush, as if he would dissipate forever if the sentence didn’t come quickly enough, the correction was made. We did that over and over, through the years. This time though, it wasn’t said with me getting out of the car for my shift at Starbucks, or as he was leaving in the morning for work before my body rolled over to his side of the bed so his scent would bathe me in a little bit of him. This time, it really was goodbye. My brain still cannot accept the words from anyone else, because they’re only F’s. They’re mine and F’s. F and Carlotta’s.
So one could say that this is the moment that impacted me the most in my life. It’s not losing my brother, or seeing my grandmother for the last time before she died. It wasn’t any of the horrible things my 23 years has seen. Hell, it wasn’t even New York City in August of 2021. It was F. It was the most beautiful green eyes you’ve ever laid eyes upon. It was the person who was first to learn about all of those horrible life events. It was coming into my life when we were 19 and 21 and leaving kisses on my neck that can be felt like he was sitting here next to me right now. Weddings and trips and being there for two of my grandparents dying and two of my sisters being born, teaching me how to drive, the one to witness what it was like for me to move out. It wasn’t July 7th, it was November 29th. May 11th for three years in a row, March 9th too. August 14th, June 21st, and May 18th. It was all of that and so much more. It’s enough to make me wander around for this past year with a sadness that nothing can tame because it’s been a year and the tears have never gone away like my lies are able to make people think. The truth is that there’s a brokenness that has become so commonplace within me that it’s exhausting to keep up the facade of okayness any longer. One year is a long time, but it isn’t long enough to heal the wounds as the so-called experts say.
Now you know a little bit more about me. Was it too much?