It was supposed to be a fun night. In early February, ten of us gathered in the backyard of my sister Kelly’s new home in Austin to surprise her for her 30th birthday. The dinner table was set with bouquets of orange roses, yellow wildflowers, and pink perennials, and the dusk sky faded into royal blue. After months of planning, Kelly’s husband Cory managed to safely bring us together to celebrate. Part of the plot was my secret flight from New York. Once Kelly recovered from the shock, the evening was full laughter under string lights. Cory designed a six course menu tailored specifically to Kelly’s likes, from tuna aguachile to pastrami-spiced duck. To top it off, he adorned a chocolate tart with a small white candle he had saved from their first anniversary. As wine pairings alternated with impromptu speeches, Kelly glowed in the candlelight.
Meanwhile, across the table from her, I couldn’t help but slip into darkness. The music and heat lamps were turned up high, and Kelly and her friends began singing into their wine glasses. I could’ve joined them, but I could do little more than watch the shadow of my fork dance in the flickering candlelight. Someone shared a story about food poisoning that seemed to get the crowd laughing, so I threw in a half-chuckle. Someone else said something about a hair clip. Someone next to me tried to start a conversation and I just nodded. I noticed dill on my plate, which I hate but couldn't be bothered to move. I felt like I was trapped underwater, perceiving only fragments of my surroundings, everything outside wallopy and faraway.
When you’re going through a break up, you get showered with all sorts of help and advice. Socialize. Try new things. Go to parties. Take care of yourself. My therapy-fluent friends tell me to sit with my emotions. Identify them (anguish, exhaustion, anger, emptiness). Feel them (cold, foggy, breathless, fragile). When it first happened, I called my grandmother in tears, who instructed me to open a window and scream. My parents fed me. Kelly got me a cashmere jumpsuit (for Netflix or nights out, whenever I felt ready). Kathleen made me laugh. Sara sheltered me. My Newfies, bless their souls, just cuddled with me.
I have tried it all, and nothing seems to work. I’m functioning, perfectly capable of brushing my teeth and buying groceries. But after giving myself completely to the greatest love of my life, I am left alone and adrift, trying to find myself in a world I thought was ours. As I slipped into a state of dissociation at Kelly’s, I only felt worse, selfish for feeling bad, knowing that at my sister’s big night, the best I could do was just sit there like a ghost. The party was one week after it happened, so perhaps my emotional paralysis was to be expected. But nearly three months later, I can’t say all that much has changed. Every little thing I do, everywhere I go, only seems to remind me of what’s missing; that I have lost what most people spend their whole lives looking for; that after two and a half years of deep-diving in the ocean, I now must snorkel in a puddle.
I’m putting Kelly’s jumpsuit to work at group dinners at trendy restaurants. I’m sticking jewels around my eyes à la Euphoria and venturing out to rooftop parties to mingle with people I haven’t seen in four years. For the duration of these events, among acquaintances and college friends and people who will never know me like he does, I cosplay the Casey people already know: fun, outgoing, in love with life. I ask more questions so I don't have to do the talking. But people invariably ask about the road trip and where we’re living now. “Oh, uhm, yeah,” “Oh my god I’m so sorr—” “It’s fine,” I say, flashing a smile as I slip off to the bathroom, only to encounter the same conversation in line. “Yes thanks I feel terrible, can I pee now?”
The true highlight of the night comes when I get to leave. After a good three hours of tequila-suppressed emotion, I can descend into the leaky subway, where in the safe company of strangers who’ve been there, who are also going home alone, I can just sob. Black mascara taints the edge of my mask, which doubles as a tissue. My deep breaths fog my glasses and hide my red eyes. Riders take no notice, engrossed by their Beats, their blue lights, their Harry Potter. Or at least I don’t think, I can hardly see them. For a brief moment, we’re suspended in this hurtling disaster together, at the mercy of forces beyond our control, and I can feel at peace.
And on those nights, when I get home—usually around 10pm, I don’t last long these days—I just want to disappear into a movie or a book or my bed. I’ll wipe out his pen, take a drag, and think, “Yeah, you did this,” as I exhale a long white cloud, heart seething like the crackling oil. “I’m keeping this.”
My family has been a godsend during the last few months, and it feels even worse failing to show up for them. A few weeks ago, for the first time in over a year, my extended family gathered at my grandmother’s home on Easter. Everyone was either fully vaccinated or on their way, a moment of immense gratitude and joy after a year panicked over my 86-year-old grandmother. Ten of us sat around the dining room table devouring homemade lasagna. Our boisterous laughter turned the room into a sauna and we argued over whether to crack the door for some cool air. And yet, the harder everyone laughed, the further I fell into myself. I nodded along, throwing in “Oh wows,” to conversations I wasn’t following, until, like mortar fire on my tear ducts, my eyes began to burn. Just as I turned away to look at family photos on the wall, trying to knock back my tears like a shot of tequila, I’m noticed by my aunt. I take a deep breath, turn my head, and flashback with a smile. “Isn’t this lasagna divine?”
I’ve tried getting away. Recently, my best friend Sara whisked me off to her home in Bermuda for a week-long getaway. It was all the turquoise ocean and cotton candy sunsets I needed. Her new boyfriend, Mark, who loves to fish, cooked us dinner from fresh caught lobsters. Later that weekend, we took the boat out. We passed around beers in the sun and discovered sea anemones, parrot fish, and massive sea cucumbers in the low tide, during which I sliced my foot on a rock. It didn’t even hurt that bad. I almost wanted it to hurt more. But the beer started going to my head, and so did the sun. The music got slow. The boat accelerated to full speed, and I felt my body rushing forward, faster than my heart could keep up. I lowered my sunglasses to cover my stinging eyes. If anyone were to ask, it’s the sea salt.
Last month I had dinner with another close friend who’s also going through a difficult break up. (Covid has been ruthless on relationships—me, three close friends, my younger sister, many of her friends). We’ve been holding each other’s hands through these last few months, alternating tearful calls in the middle of Central Park and Target. “It’s really the blind leading the blind over here,” she joked. Over meatballs, baguette, and the ever-present bottle of red at her home in Brooklyn, we wondered aloud: “People actually go on living like this? The city might as well be on fire.”
At that moment, I think I realized that in fact, there is nothing to do but just let it burn. Everything in its path. My concentration, my motivations, my plans. Have them. My appetite, my waking hours, my restful nights. Take it all. Similar to the way I realized trying to fight the uncertainty of Covid is futile, so too, is trying to fight the pain of heartbreak. In the face of forces larger than life, there is nothing to do but make do. In the meantime, I’ll sit right here on this subway seat, let this hurtling disaster unfold around me, rail lines screeching and lights flickering, and wait for my stop.
On my way there, I have discovered an emotional perceptiveness I have never known, a heightened awareness of everything around me and in me. The other day, I walked by a musical storefront near Lincoln Center, and my mask turned damp again listening to two musicians play the piano and cello. I burst into tears when I got out of the shower and couldn’t reach that part of my back that he used to moisturize. Walking through Central Park, I felt my chest pang as I watched an old man eat an ice cream sandwich alone on a bench. On my way to get my second vaccine, a man on the subway tried to hit on me by complimenting my jacket, to which I snapped, “Can I just read in silence?” While cooking spaghetti, waiting for the pasta to soften and curl in the boiling water, I was so absorbed in a daydream about him that I caught myself mumbling, “I miss you,” aloud.
That night at Kelly’s dinner party, there was a line that I wrote down as I quietly journaled in the notes of my phone underneath the table. It read, “If for nothing else, you’re feeling IT.” If for nothing else, nothing could be more true.