Wreckage

Your world ends and nobody marks the calendar. Not the disasters that make the news—the private ones. A phone call at the wrong moment. Something you already suspected finally said out loud. Your best friend telling you he’s moving to Brazil, already halfway there in his head, and then two weeks later he’s just gone. The future he was describing doesn’t belong to anyone now.

You stand in the wreckage and wait. Wait for it to hurt less, for things to make sense, for yourself to feel solid instead of like you’re performing being okay when really you’re nowhere near it. The longer you wait the more you realize nothing’s coming to fix it—there’s no memo, no explanation, no reason that would make this better.

Everyone gets at least one of these moments. The details change but the shape stays the same. Someone dies, or leaves, or you find out they’ve been with someone they weren’t supposed to be with. Or you ask a question and finally get an answer that rewrites everything. And you’re left with that useless question that everyone asks: why me? How do I live with this?

There’s a particular kind of alone that comes with this. Not lonely exactly—it’s more that nobody else can live in the wreckage the way you have to. They can help, they can listen, but they’re not the ones standing there at three in the morning wondering how much of yourself got buried in it.

I don’t know how you come out the other side. I just know the wreckage doesn’t disappear. You learn to move through it instead.