Fade Away

When all of this is said and done

You will be alone

'Cause I know this won't last forever

Here's a toast to your unknown.

(~Rebelution, Fade Away)

Thirty days came and went. You had hoped that reaching the thirty-day mark would make things better, that you’d be in the clear. As the countdown continued, you even told your best friend and therapist, I feel like if I can get past thirty days, I can start to coast, you naively boasted. 

The significance of those thirty days wasn't arbitrary; it was a milestone you believed would symbolize transition, healing, and freedom. You imagined waking up on the thirty-first day lighter, with the burden of sorrow significantly lessened. The thought was that by then, the chaos might start to settle into order, that emotions would be manageable, and the pain would feel more distant—a tangible countdown to liberation from the heavy heartache you’d been carrying through the year of that relationship, and since it ended.

Grief doesn't work like that. It doesn't align with your agenda or timeline. Grief has a mind of its own, striking you with feelings of anger or sadness when you least expect it, flooding your thoughts with memories, good and bad.

You celebrated thirty days as a silent victory for yourself. I might actually get through this, you thought. Eventually, this is going to be so far behind me, a distant memory. Something about that distance made you feel both happy and sad. Happy for the fact that the pain of that experience will be behind you, yet sad that it also means time will take you further and further from a person you deeply loved. 

But it isn't distant, is it? Days get checked off on a calendar, yet the distance stays the same. You still aren't as far from this as you’d hoped. It’s as if you’re moving through mud. 

You don't feel any less heartache, any less sad, or any less angry. In fact, all of these feel worse, heavier even. Every day ticks by with the relentless persistence of a clock's hands, each tick echoing like a hollow drumbeat in the silence. Your mind remains a cluttered attic of thoughts and memories, their presence like faded photographs collecting dust; perhaps they arise less often, but they still do, nonetheless. Every. Single. Day. Empty apologies and words disguised as false hope hover like the distant hum of a freeway or the monotony of a refrigerator's drone—persistent, unwanted, forever in the background of your mind.

You’re not sure what hurts worse these days. Is it the void, the empty space, the outline of a person you love that isn't there anymore? The memory of the texture of his clothes under your fingertips, or tangling with his long limbs, or the feeling of his chest beneath your hand, and the rise and fall as he breathed softly during sleep. Or is it the need to be held and hugged and comforted, yet knowing it will never happen again from this person? Maybe it’s looking back at what happened? Replaying the times you cried and he held you gently, wiping away tears he caused. He pushed you to heartbreak, yet always pulled you back in with tenderness and care. Hot and cold. Hot and cold. That’s the most dangerous part of that cycle: when the vicious moments are sandwiched with tenderness, creating confusion and a distorted reality.

If you’re honest, it’s all of it that hurts, burning from the center of your chest. You’re in pain, heavy with sorrow. He’s the only thing you want to soothe your discomfort. And he’s the reason it exists in the first place.

Time is supposed to heal all wounds. How much time? How long will it take?

I’m missing him so much right now. You confide in your therapist with tears in your eyes. I’m just feeling so sad. I need him so much right now, and I’m so fucking sad and hurt that he can't be there for me! You manage to spit the words out, lip quivering and voice shaking. The grief is a mix of missing what was and what will never be. You feel both deep loss, sadness, and grief, mixed in with rage and a sense of betrayal.

​I just…I trusted him. I feel so betrayed! Your therapist stays quiet longer than usual, holding space for your emotions, for whatever bubbles up. I’m so fucking mad. And finally, quietly, you add again, I trusted him.

You manage to hold in your tears and look your therapist in the eye. What happened was not ok. There is no world in which what happened was ok. She finally says gently. Her clinical experience has helped guide you through this mess. And that has given you comfort.

I’m sick of dealing with fucked up people. You blurt out, your sadness and anger tangling themselves within you. This was so fucked up.

As more weeks pass since those first thirty days, it becomes both brutal and surreal to realize that this person is—or will be—a stranger to you. A person you loved, poured yourself and your heart into, went ring shopping with, daydreamed about a home and a life and a future with—this person is just gone, into the void. You catch yourself looking at a spot on the couch he used to lie on, or the side of the bed he used to sleep on. You pull up a memory to remind you what it was like with the shape of him there beside you. But if you’re honest, you can’t even face his side of the bed most nights. You keep your back turned from the pain of his absence, from opening Pandora’s box to all the memories. Once opened, it becomes impossible to avoid.

That’s the ultimate struggle when you’re grieving after an abusive relationship. Your mind starts dancing with all the pain and destruction that accompanied the tenderness and love you also experienced. You begin to bargain and negotiate with reality and what was. You can't comprehend the emptiness and the betrayal you feel. You're at a loss with how to soothe your discomfort when the only thing you crave is the poison that will kill you, the very thing that caused this ruin to begin with. This is the paradox that twists your heart: how can you long so deeply for something and someone that continually shatters you? It feels as if you're caught in a whirlpool, pulled under by a force you cannot resist, even though you see it swallowing you whole. There's a disturbing comfort in the familiar pain, a twisted sense of safety in knowing exactly how you will be hurt, as if that knowledge shields you from new, unknown wounds. Yet, in those quiet moments, you realize that this craving is part of the chain that binds you. Breaking free means letting go not just of the pain, but also of the longing for the brief highs that came with it.

But at the end of the day, when you're revisiting memories of good moments, when you’re grieving the fact that there weren't more, and when you’re aching for a future that is wiped away from existence, you’re faced with realizing this is a dream, an illusion. The good moments, while sweet and wonderful at times, are no less dangerous than the devastating lows they followed. You can't have one without the other. Those loving, kind, gentle times aren't reality. Not when they’re dealt by a wolf dressed in sheep's clothing.

Eventually, as more time passes and fills the cracks in your heart, this person and this experience will disappear—a stranger, someone that you used to know. Until then, you pray for another thirty days, until this somebody becomes nobody.

​Keeping it calm; Until we all fade away and move on; Keeping it calm; Until we all fade away, you live on. (~Rebelution, Fade Away)