Fragments of 48 Hours

He’s not just a coworker, but a friend. He came in my office and sat down. We chatted for a bit, but something was strange about his manner, the way he talked. Finally, he patted my knee, in a comforting sort of way. “There is something you need to know,” he said. “Matt is married.”

Matt is married.

The air was sucked out of the room, and I just stared at him. Slowly, the rims of my eyes felt damp, and before I knew it, I was starting to cry. I felt like I had been punched. I wasn't breathing. I wasn't listening. I wasn't even seeing. I was just staring blankly ahead as my coworker talked. I have no idea what he even said after that point. But I know that that sentence: “Matt is married” will echo in my head for the rest of my life.

~

I cried, curled up on the floor for an hour. Why the floor? I don’t know. Just felt so heavy, the floor seemed like the only place I could reach.

~

“There are layers to things like this,” my roommate said. “You get over certain layers, but then, new layers show up, and you have to learn how to get over those ones too.”

~

“Why didn't you tell me Matt had married?”

“I didn't know how to tell you,” he said: the man who I had once called "Dad," during the days when I was the one getting ready to marry his son.

“You’re still in my heart.” His eyes filled with tears.

“And you’re still my family,” I said, and we hugged.

~

“How could I develop a relationship with someone else if I held onto ours?” he asked in his letter. He asked so many questions, far too many for a 2-month long relationship where our physical intimacy never went much further than a kiss on the cheek and hand-holding. Yet, here he was, 6 years later, asking if we could have another chance. He’s in his 30s, yet he has never dated anyone else, and had clung to the memory of those two, short, awkward months when I was a teenager and didn't have a clue what I was doing.

I felt bad for him. The whole letter was just sad. He’s never allowed himself to live. He had spent years holding on to something that was never really there to begin with. And it hurt me to see that he had never moved on. I wrote back and thanked him for his honesty and told him that that part of my life had closed. I am a different now. I've moved on. I wished him all the best in the future. And that was it.

~

Not so. All of Facebook has now seen his latest status update, where he dragged me through the mud. What did I ever do to you? Nothing. I was always kind to you.

~

“Abigail. She’s dead. She passed away this morning.”

My empty silence filled the room when he delivered the news. Our mutual friend had only been sick for a matter of weeks. She didn't even get a chance to say goodbye to her very young daughter. The cancer just took her—like that. I didn't have an answer. I just zoned out while he talked.

It was so quick. So quick. I don’t understand. Why do there have to be orphans? The two of them—they were all each other had. Now the little girl has no one.