Something woke me up. It could have been a car horn, an animal, the various new medications I am on, the fact that I didn't eat or drink enough yesterday, or it could just be that this is my new norm. My FitBit registered that I was doing cardio. I took a deep breath to try to calm down.

I check Google Maps. I deleted all of your accounts from my phone and generally removed all ways for you to get in contact contact me, but I left location services on so that I can know where you are. You're at your friends, 45 minutes away. I breathe a sigh of relief.

I try to go back to sleep. I cycle through all of my sleeping positions and sigh out of exasperation. I take a drink of water. I try counting backwards in multiples of three from 1120. I pet the cat. I make a person out of pillows to comfort me. I'm awake.

I open my phone. No calls. No emails. No texts. No comments from fake Reddit accounts. Just kind strangers offering support and advice.

I wonder why it's so hard to swallow. My doctor said that my thyroid is going to get worse over the coming weeks. I can't tell if this choking sensation that I have is from the mass in my throat or if it's from crippling anxiety. Regardless, I try to force myself to drink water. It hurts.

The exercise I went through last night should have exhausted me enough to sleep through the night. I spent over an hour archiving all of our photos and emails. First it was the 536 pictures of the horrible things you did while we were together. It was easy to find those. Everything from 3/20 forward.

The beginning of that day was so wonderful. We exchanged gifts. Anniversary lunch at my favorite place, buying new appliances, Minecraft, and then out for your favorite, Mexican. It was one of the best days we had in a really long time. Everything felt so hopeful and positive. Did you know we didn't take any pictures that day? There's no record of our last happy memories... just like there are no records of so many of the horrible things you did. Deleted or not captured, its all the same in the end.

I'm exhausted but wide awake. I wonder what you're doing right now. I assume you're probably sleeping soundly. You didn't reach out for most of the day, save your accusatory email where you asserted that I deleted our wedding pictures off of your phone. I didn't delete them, but I wonder why you care. That day was special to me, but you messaged other women the days before and the days after, just like any other day.

I've been reflecting a lot on what we had. I wonder how much of it was real.

Your ex wife said something to me that shook me today. She said "he wanted a house, a wife, and a baby".

I remember some ten years back I confronted my dad about how he left me alone as a young child with a mentally ill mother. The letter I wrote was some 20 pages long and I stood there and read it to him in person. It talked about my painful memories and my fucked up coping skills, up to and including "sucking cocks and packing these dudes lunches for the next day to prove my value".

My dad stood there for a long time in silence, smoking his cigarette. It was dark and you could hear the crickets in the yard. The wind was cool. Eventually he broke the silence by saying, "you know... I was really taken by your mom. I wanted to give her everything. She wanted a house and a baby and to be married... so I gave her all of that... but then one by one she decided she didn't want those things anymore."

The rest of the conversation is fuzzy in my mind, but I remember that line specifically.

As I was moving more photos to the archive I came across a screenshot from September 2019 where we were talkng about buying a house together. In hindsight it's literally insane we were having that talk after only knowing eachother a few months. I know that's unhealthy now, but at the time I was so hopeful to have that life you described. House. Wife. Baby.

We never took the time to get to know one another. When I met you, you were rushing through life at 100 miles an hour. I didn't know it at the time, but you had only lived on your own for two months. You appeared to dive head first into us, when in actuality, you kept doors and windows open and never fully devoted yourself to me; to us.

I saw so many pictures of us from the beginning. There's us, laying in bed, smiling. There are pictures of us out in the pre-COVID world having margaritas or eating stuffed breads at fancy parties I threw. And then... there's not much of anything. My camera roll really shows when you checked out. It was before we even got married.

I'm still grieving the loss of what I thought we had. The pictures are put away now, so all I have to go on are the memories in my head. I was alone for most of them, especially the important ones. Even that last good day together, before I got the text that wrecked my life, you had fallen asleep, over-full on Mexican food and margaritas. You didn't say goodnight. You didn't say I love you.

And then there was nothing.