Five months before I brought up the idea of divorce, I had a thought. This could be the rest of my life. And from then on, the seed was planted. Every time we had an argument, I thought, this could be the rest of my life. When she cried, when she begged, when she said, “But I still love you so much, Jamie”, I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to tell her that I wanted to leave her. The thought brought grief as much as relief.
Liv and I had good times and bad times, same as any other couple. There were times when I thought she might be my soulmate, and there were others where I wondered what had ever attracted me towards her in the first place. When I first had the thought, I felt this deep sadness. A deep regret, even though we hadn’t actually broken up yet. I thought about how much I would miss her presence. Her laugh when she had her good days, her smile when we were together. But then I thought about the crying, the horrible things she would spout on her bad days. Accusations.
Liv’s mental illnesses, in the beginning of our relationship, didn’t afect us much. Sometimes she would go radio silent for a couple days, then come back and say something along the lines of, “Sorry, bad mental health days”, but she would act like herself. She’d even joke about it sometimes. e longer we progressed, the more I bore witness to her anguish.
There were times where I’d come home, calling her name, searching for her around the house, only to find her in some frightening predicament. She was curled up under the kitchen sink once, inside the cabinet. She had pulled out all the cleaning supplies and scattered them on the floor. That was the only way I would’ve found her. I opened the door to see her silently sitting there, contorted like some kind of acrobat, with wide, glassy eyes, her lips trembling.
As much as I had ever loved her, Liv scared me. I thought that I could handle it. But there were times where I saw her as a monster.
When these episodes passed, she would act completely normal. She’d talk about how embarrassed she was, how she hated herself in those kinds of moments. She’d say, “I wish I didn’t hurt inside so much”. I couldn’t tell her that at times, I hated her just as much as she hated herself.
Liv was like some kind of poisonous plant spreading roots, sprouting deadly flowers. The longer I was with her, the more crazy I felt. I asked her, one night, mostly as a joke, whether she thought craziness was contagious. She was very quiet, then said that it wasn’t funny of me to say that, and why would I say that to her? That was when I realized that she was just as aware of her effect on us, her effect on me. And it made me sad, of course, but it also brought a sort of heat, a sort of anger to my chest. Why would she allow this to continue? Why was I allowing it to continue?
I knew that Liv loved me deeply. I thought I loved her the same way, enough to look past everything she put us through. But I couldn’t. I struggled to imagine how anyone could love that blindly, that passionately. She would tell me she loved me so much, so so much that it hurt. She would say, “I want this to work so bad, I want it to work so bad. I think I want it so much that it hurts me. And the hurt builds upon the hurt, and it feels like my whole heart is filled with hurt. So much that I don’t know if I can love you the right way.”
I knew I wasn’t the best partner. I knew I had done terrible things to us too. But it was easier to blame it all on her, paint her as the monster. It wasn’t really her fault, maybe it was just her mental illness. It consumed her from the inside, and I felt that she allowed it to. She succumbed to it, saw it akin to a very cruel lover.
In the end, I left her. When I left, I thought I would feel happier. I thought I would feel that sense of relief that I had felt every time I thought about leaving her. But I didn’t. I missed her deeply. I missed the real Liv, who she was on her good days. My life felt incomplete without her. I felt empty inside, and I wondered if she felt just as empty.
His words were stiff, characteristically so. He had always been the type to hide his emotions. It drove me crazy at times. When I first met him, I thought he was so mysterious and brooding. I liked how serious he was, how calm. Now, there was nothing I disliked more. In this moment, hearing those hollow words, it made my heart clench.
I nodded, trying to keep myself in check. I couldn’t bring myself to speak.
He swallowed and I watched his adam’s apple bob. His skin, speckled with stubble, shifted over it. I couldn’t bear to look at his eyes.
“I know this is what I promised I wouldn’t do,” he began.
“No,” I said. “It’s okay. This is better for both of us.”
He didn’t say anything in response to that, and I didn’t know what expression he was making. I didn’t want to know.
We sat there in silence for a bit, unsure of what to say. I felt so stupid, saying these performative, hollow words. I wanted to cry, to beg him to stay. Why is this more important than me? I wanted to ask.
“You have to do this,” I forced myself to say, more to convince myself than to comfort him.
“...Yeah. I…”
I composed my face and looked up at him. I smiled. He didn’t smile back. He just stared at me with those dark eyes. He didn’t have an expression, but I could see his right eyelid twitching a tiny bit, like he was fighting the urge to cry.
“So do you wanna walk me to the car?” I asked.
He just stared at me for a long time silently. He sucked in some air and looked away for a second before nodding.
“Yeah,” he said.
Are we absolutely sure? I wanted to ask, but I didn’t. There was no point, and it would only hurt both of us more.
I remembered watching them as they drifted into the sky, black and shiny against the blue. The sunlight reflecting off of them.
A sob bubbled up in my chest all of a sudden, but I repressed it. It was the first time I felt the urge to cry since I received the news.
The ceremony felt long and arduous. There was so much crying. Sympathetic words. Speeches, as if this were some kind of high school graduation. I sat through all of it with a stony expression, unsure of how to feel.
In the end, I stood there, my face tilted up to the sun, watching the balloons float off. A lump in my throat.
When I got home, I tried to cry but it wouldn’t come out. I sat there, waiting in our empty apartment. Nothing. It felt wrong. It felt like something was holding me back. I wanted to cry so badly but I just couldn’t.
I couldn’t.
Arden always had some morbid fascination with death and the afterlife. She binge watched ghost shows, went to psychic mediums, played with Ouija boards. I found it disturbing in the beginning. I never quite understood it.
“Why do you like that shit?” I asked as I watched her, her eyes glued to the TV screen as some cheesy ghost hunting show played.
“Babe,” she said without looking away. “Why do you like sci-fi so much? It’s the possibility of what could be.”
I wrinkled my nose. I guess she was right. “But why would you want to know that? Doesn’t it make you scared?”
“That’s exactly why I watch it. Why do you think people like true crime? They fear it, so they want to learn more about it. The unknown is the cause of fear.”
It was impossible for me to hold onto that aversion towards morbidity as our relationship progressed. I loved Arden completely, and that fascination was just a part of her. Before long, I began participating in these activities with her. We even picked up ghost hunting. We got microphones to clip onto our shirts and pretended to speak into them, with wide eyes and a hushed tone. Arden called herself Dr. Fear, which I thought was ridiculous, even for daytime television. I went by Alice Spectre. Arden hated it. Together, we called ourselves the Grave Ghouls. It wasn’t clever in any way, which we thought was hilarious.
As the years progressed, Arden became even more obsessed with the afterlife. She called it the biggest question. I always joked that the biggest question for me was what I would have for lunch. Her desire to answer “the biggest question” grew and grew, as did my love for her. But at the end, she seemed to speak of nothing else. “The biggest question” this, “the biggest question” that. It haunted her. It haunted the both of us.
She began to speak of her own death, which scared me. It would come out of nowhere. We’d just be out and about, eating ice cream or something mundane like that. And then she’d say, “I want black balloons at my funeral.”
I had no qualms with it at first, but the more she did it, the more it disturbed me. Her ultimate death captivated her. She fantasized about it. Sometimes she would make predictions. I told her I didn’t like that shit. I got so fed up one day, I said I was going to leave her if she didn’t stop fucking talking about it.
“I’m sorry,” she said. Her face looked pained. “I’m so sorry, Ev.”
When she made that expression, I suddenly had a strange thought. I wondered if her own behavior tormented herself as much as it tormented me. It was like she couldn’t help it.
The week before she died, I broke up with her.
“The biggest question” was certainly a part of it, but that wasn’t all. The past two years or so, it felt like she had become stagnant. She became comfortable. It felt like she had no interest in growing anymore. It manifested in little things at first. She wouldn’t clean the apartment. When I asked about work, she was always dismissive. I asked her about getting married, and she would say, “What’s the point? I like how we are right now”. She gained weight. Our made up ghost hunting show, Grave Ghouls, ceased production.
I thought it was depression, and maybe it was. I begged her to see a therapist. She vehemently denied that there was a problem at all. I threatened to break up as a last resort, because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I don’t like to admit it, but that was one of the tricks I would use on her. I wouldn’t say it in so many words, but she always knew what I meant. Her eyes would get all wide, her face stricken. “Nonono baby, please, I need you, pleasepleaseplease…” It was sick, but knowing that someone cared about me that much felt good. It was something I almost craved.
The last time I did it, she didn’t react at all. She said, “So do it already”. I was shocked. I went home to my parents that weekend. I waited for the anxious texts, the tear-filled voicemails. Nothing.
I didn’t even last the whole weekend. I drove back Sunday morning, sure that I would find her dead in our apartment. When I showed up, I was the one in tears. She was on the couch when I came back. She looked over at me lazily and said, “Knew you’d come back”.
Whoever the Arden I knew was long gone now.
The following week, when I got the call, I felt numb. I asked the police officer if she had killed herself. He said no, that she had been involved in a hit and run. He asked, “Did it seem like she was going to kill herself?”. I didn’t know how to respond to that question.
There was a part of me that was afraid that she would. In the back of my mind, I always wondered how far she would go to answer her own questions.
Her family and friends called. They showed up at our apartment. My life was a living hell.
Arden hadn’t told them we’d broken up. They would say things like, “I can’t imagine what you’re going through” or “You must be hurting so much right now”. I would smile forcefully at them, thank them for their kind words. But the truth was, I didn’t hurt. I had, for a long time, expected her death. And judging by the way that she spoke in the last few months, she did too. It seemed like we had both come to terms with it.
The monumental mason asked me what to put on her headstone. I stared at him, trying to think of what to say. Arden’s mom stepped in, told him, “Beloved by her family and her wife.”
I said, “She wasn’t my wife.”
Her mother said, “You may as well have been.”
In the months following Arden’s death, I cried more than I had ever cried before. But not because I mourned her. They were almost angry tears. I hated that she got to just leave, be remembered as some angel, when she had been nothing but some passive, dark entity in my life at the end. I felt like she had ruined my goddamn life. I wished I had broken up with her sooner. I couldn’t find it inside myself to tell her family that we had split. Her headstone called me her wife, but I saw her as a stranger.
I convinced myself that she had brought her death upon herself, even if she didn’t physically commit suicide. I decided that she had, in some way, manifested it to fulfill herself. To hurt me.
But I don’t even know if she thought of me in the end.
I was seven, maybe eight years old when it happened. Mom and I lived in a shabby house in a rural area, surrounded by wheat fields and run down wooden fences and dirt roads. The summer days were hot, but the nights were biting and cold. It was quiet. It was lonely.
I’ve always had trouble sleeping, even as a child. At night, the wind howled in such a way that it sounded like someone was wailing outside. My windows would tremble, as if someone was trying to come in. My active imagination kept me up into the late hours of the night, eyes wide and plastered open, determined to stay vigilant.
I never did have any intruders, aside from common field mice or spiders, neither of which particularly frightened me since they were so commonplace for where we lived. My mother always reassured me that I was safe as could be here–who would even want to break into our house? We had nothing of real value, and to begin with, the area was sparse. Our nearest neighbor was nearly a mile away from us.
At times, I wondered why we even stuck around here. It was unbearably lonely, and we lived what most would call the simple life. Looking back now, I miss it at times. But when I was younger, it was just so damn boring. The few times a year that I visited my father in the city were always exciting, though I didn’t like him much, or his girlfriend. They had never been unkind to me, in fact they were probably better parents than my mom was. But I resented them all the same for leaving me in the countryside.
My mother hated the city. I didn’t know if it was because of him, or if she just disliked the bustling nature of metropolitan areas. When they were together, we lived in a tiny apartment that smelled like pancakes in the morning and cigarette smoke at night. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly when the relationship had begun to deteriorate, but I certainly noticed when they stopped arguing. It was always so quiet. I almost wished they would go back to it.
I’m getting distracted, though. None of this really has to do with what happened.
The night was another sleepless one. I was laying in bed, staring up at the ceiling, counting the cracks. Mom had suggested it once, probably just to shut me up. I had just about memorized that there were three large cracks, with maybe sixteen hairline ones branching off of them. Nevertheless, when I couldn’t sleep, I counted, trying to ignore the taptaptap of the window.
It was well into the night when I felt this overwhelming feeling that something was different, but I didn’t know what. It’s difficult to describe. I stopped counting the cracks and sat up.
Something’s wrong, my mind screamed at me.
It felt like I wasn’t controlling my own movements. I got out of bed and walked over mechanically to the window. I stared out.
There was a figure in the field.
I felt sick. Her nightgown was billowing in the wind, the wheat and grass bending around her. I left the room, went downstairs, opened the door. It was freezing. I couldn’t imagine why she was standing out there in just her nightie. How long had she been out there?
My bare feet sank into the soft dirt as I walked out to the edge of the field, never breaking my line of sight. That entire time, she didn’t move a centimeter. I couldn’t hear anything over the wind, and I assumed she couldn’t either, but I opened my mouth and shouted at her anyway.
She didn’t turn, didn’t acknowledge my presence at all. It felt like hours that I stood there on the edge, yelling, but in reality, it was probably only a few seconds. I was afraid to walk into the field, afraid that the grass would swallow me up.
The moonlight was bright that night. Her skin seemed almost luminous, and her hair flew wildly around her head. For a second, I had a horrible thought that she looked like a monster, one of the creatures that I imagined tapping against my window at night.
Then, something dark bloomed across the small of her back. It was small at first, just a pinprick. Then it began to spread, soaking the nightgown. In that moment, all I could do was stare.
Something’s wrong.
She collapsed forward, face down, and I couldn’t see her anymore. It was like my fear had come true. The field had swallowed her up.
For two days, my mother’s body rotted in the field, maggots and birds picking at her decaying flesh. I covered the windows in my room with sheets, and I cocooned myself in blankets despite the sticky, suffocating heat. I didn’t sleep for those two days. Every time I closed my eyes, I imagined her standing in that field. Sometimes she would turn around and look at me, except she didn’t have any eyes.
Years later, I found out that some idiot kids had killed her. Shot her by accident with their father’s gun. They had been playing with it in the field, and when it happened, they scurried home. They kept their mouths shut like clams for forty eight hours before one of them caved and poured out the whole story between snot and tears to their parents. The police were promptly called, and I was found in the house, half-starved and sleep deprived.
I was shipped off to live with my father and his now fiance, away from the wheat fields and clear moonlight. They put me in therapy and constantly walked on eggshells around me. They treated me like a fragile china vase, which I suppose was appropriate, considering the circumstances.
As the years passed, I sometimes found myself forgetting the whole ordeal had happened. It was like I’d tricked my own mind into believing that my parents had never divorced, that my mom had died a peaceful death, and that’s what ended the marriage. I never lived in the countryside. My sleep problems were because I stayed up watching TV too late.
Other times, though, it was all I could think about. It was like a stain I couldn’t wash out. A figure in the field.
I watched as her lighter lit up, then burnt out. The chk, chk, chk echoed in my ears as I stared at her face, illuminating, then darkening over and over as she flicked her lighter.
“Can’t get a flame,” she mumbled around the cigarette.
“Maybe it’s a sign,” I said.
She laughed and took the cigarette out of her mouth. “You’re right. I shouldn’t. But now you’ve followed me out here for nothing.”
I shrugged. “I always follow you out here for nothing. It’s not like I smoke.”
Her eyes met mine and a smile spread across her face slowly. “I guess you’re right.”
I could hear the muffled music from behind the closed doors. It felt like my heart was still rattling from the heavy bass.
She turned, breaking her gaze. “Fuck, it’s cold out here. Aren’t you cold?”
“Not really. I was sweating in there. Everyone’s all pressed up against each other.”
She laughed softly. “Yeah, that’s true. I didn’t really want to smoke anyway. I just needed a second. Thanks for coming with me.”
I leaned my back against the rail. “Isn’t this your scene? I feel like I usually have to drag you out by the hair.”
She stared ahead and frowned. “Yeah, it is. I don’t know. Not feeling it tonight.”
“Something on your mind?”
She furrowed her brow and opened her mouth to respond, but then closed it. She looked conflicted.
“Callie?” I said.
She leaned against the rail and stared down. For a fleeting, horrible second, I thought she was gonna climb up and jump. Instinctively, my hand flinched. She let out a nervous exhale and stepped back.
“I don’t know. I just feel kind of off tonight. I’m chalking it up to general anxiety. Maybe the crowd’s just too much right now.”
“Do you wanna leave?”
She shook her head. “It’s nice being out here. Feels peaceful.”
“It does,” I agreed and looked out past the railing. “It feels lively.”
We were facing the street. Neon lights from storefront signs shone against the people walking.
“Jess,” she said. “Can I ask you a weird question?”
“What is it?”
“When do you think we’ll stop feeling like children?”
I took a second to process before responding, “Um. It’s difficult to say.”
She rocked back and forth on her feet. “I thought I’d have things figured out more. But it feels a little like I’ve just started living. Everything’s confusing.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “You’re young. We’re young. We’re all confused.”
“I’m tired of being confused.”
I half smiled. “Everyone is. Your twenties are some of the hardest times of your life. If you look at it in the grand scope of things, we have so much life left to live, so much more to learn.”
I tried to sound confident in my words, but the truth was, I felt exactly how she did.
She took a deep breath and looked at me. I stared into her dark eyes. It must’ve just been a second or two, but it felt like an eternity. I could hear the muffled music, feel my heart pounding in my chest still. The neon lights reflected on the left side of her face. An overwhelming, inexplicable feeling rose in my chest.
I want to kiss her.
“Callie,” I said.
The doors behind us opened and a couple of drunk people stumbled between us. I stepped back in surprise.
“Shit, sorry,” one of them blurted out. “I’m dizzy.”
I looked at Callie, who still had a surprised expression on her face. She made eye contact with me and tilted her head to the right. Back into the bar.
She grabbed my hand and we went back in. It was still crowded with music blasting and people dancing against each other. She made her way through the crowd, clasping my hand the whole time. My hand began to sweat and I was afraid it would slip right out of hers, so I grasped her tighter.
I thought she was leading us to the exit, but she turned right instead of heading straight out. I wondered where she was taking us. She pushed through the crowd, determined to get to whatever destination she had in mind. I had no idea how she was navigating. I could barely see through all the people.
Before I knew it, we were in the ladies’ restroom. There was a long line, but Callie marched past it and into the stalls. I could hear people talking to us, asking what we thought we were doing. I felt dizzy, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of the heat or alcohol. Callie pushed on every stall door, her hand still holding mine. Most of the stalls were occupied, but she happened upon one that opened.
“What–”
She rushed in and dragged me in before slamming and locking the door behind us.
The music was blasting in my ears and my whole body was beginning to sweat now. She let go of my clammy hand, and I wiped it against my shorts.
“Why are we here?” I about shouted at her.
She had this glassy look in her eyes, like she wasn’t all there or something. “You’re so fucking pretty, Jess,” she told me.
I blinked. I hadn’t been expecting that. “Thank you,” I yelled back. “You’re also fucking pretty.”
She laughed and turned her face away for a second before looking at me.
“I want to kiss you,” she said.
My heart was hammering in my chest, and it wasn’t because of the music. I didn’t say anything back to her, just stared for a few seconds. Callie and I had always been good friends. We’d never shown romantic interest in one another, and as far as I knew, Callie didn’t even like girls.
She smiled at me with her glassy eyes. It looked almost like she was about to cry.
I didn’t even realize I had leaned in. Before I knew it, we were kissing. Her lips were soft against mine. I put my arms around her despite how sweaty we both were. Her face was sticky. I tasted salt on my tongue.
I remembered thinking, What the fuck is happening?
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