A Shadow You Carry

Iris spent the rest of that day in a haze, trying to make sense of things. But it was like her life had shattered into a hundred pieces, and she wasn’t sure how to make it fit back together. She thought that perhaps the ache she felt would never diminish, and she bit her nails to the quick as she wandered through the flat like a ghost.

Eventually she settled in her room, on the floor. She reached for her grandmother’s typewriter and drew it out into the dusky light.

If she thought about it too hard, the words would become ice. And so Iris didn’t think; she let the words pass through her heart to her mind, down her arms to her fingertips, and she wrote:

Sometimes I’m afraid to love other people.

Everyone I care about eventually leaves me, whether it’s death or war or simply because they don’t want me. They go places I can’t find, places I can’t reach. And I’m not afraid to be alone, but I’m tired of being the one left behind. I’m tired of having to rearrange my life after the people within it depart, as if I’m a puzzle and I’m now missing pieces and I will never feel that pure sense of completion again.

I lost someone close to me, yesterday. It doesn’t feel real yet.

And I’m not sure who you are, where you are. If you are breathing the same hour, the same minute as me, or if you are decades before or years to come. I don’t know what is connecting us—if it’s magical thresholds or conquered god bones or something else we’ve yet to discover. Most of all, I don’t know why I’m writing to you now. But here I am, reaching out to you. A stranger and yet a friend.

All those letters of mine you received for several months … I thought I was writing to Forest. I wrote with the unfaltering, teeth-clenched hope that they would reach him despite the kilometers between us. That my brother would read my words, even if they were minced with pain and fury, and he would come home and fill the void I feel and fix the messiness of my life.

But I realize that people are just people, and they carry their own set of fears, dreams, desires, pains, and mistakes. I can’t expect someone else to make me feel complete; I must find it on my own. And I think I was always writing for myself, to sort through my loss and worry and tangled ambitions. Even now, I think about how effortless it is to lose oneself in words, and yet also find who you are.

I hope I’m making sense. I’m probably not, because I’m writing to you but I’m also writing for me. And I don’t expect you to respond, but it helps to know someone is hearing me. Someone is reading what I pour onto a page.

It helps to know that I’m not alone tonight, even as I sit in quiet darkness.

She sat frozen for what could have been a minute or an hour, and eventually she roused enough courage to pull the sheet from the typewriter and fold it. To slip it over the threshold and into the portal. Because that was the hardest part—sharing the words she wrote. Words that could splinter steel, exposing the soft places she preferred to hide.

Night fell. She lit a candle. She paced the flat. She told herself to eat something, to drink something, but she wasn’t hungry, even though she felt empty.

She thought she might be in shock, because she was numb and kept waiting for her mother to return home, to sweep in through the door.

Eventually, Iris stopped at the kitchen table. Her trench coat was draped over one of the chairs, and she gathered it into her arms, hiding her face in the worn fabric. She closed her eyes and breathed, realizing the coat smelled like spice and evergreen. It smelled like Roman Kitt, from when he had carried it all the way from the office to her home, to ensure she was all right.

She slipped it on and belted the coat tight at her waist, returning to her room.

A letter had arrived, the thickest one yet.

She lay on her bed and read by candlelight:

I rarely share this part of my life with others, but I want to tell it to you now. A piece of armor, because I trust you. A glint of falling steel, because I feel safe with you.

I had a little sister once.

My parents can hardly speak of her these days, but her name was Georgiana. I called her Del, because she liked her middle name Delaney best. I was eight when she was born, and I can still hear the rain that poured on the day she came into the world.

She grew up in a blink, as if the years were enchanted. I loved her fiercely. And while I had always been the obedient, reserved son who never needed discipline, she was full of curiosity and courage and whimsy, and my parents didn’t know how to raise such a spirited child in society.

On her seventh birthday, she wanted to go swimming in a pond not far from our house. Just beyond the gardens and through a stretch of woods, hidden from the bustle and sounds of the city. Our parents said no; they had planned a dinner gala for her birthday, which Del couldn’t care less about. So when she begged me to sneak out with her and go for a swim, with plenty of time to return before the party … I told her yes.

It was the heart of summer and sweltering hot. We stole from the house, barefooted and dew-eyed, and we ran through the gardens all the way to the pond. There was an old rope swing, fastened to an oak branch. We took turns, hurling ourselves out into the center of the pond, because that was where it was deepest, far from the rocks and sand of the shallows.

Eventually, I grew tired and waterlogged, and a storm was brewing overhead. “Let’s go back,” I told her, but Del begged me for a few minutes more. And I, weak brother that I was, couldn’t deny her. I conceded to sit on the shore and dry off as she continued to swing and swim. I closed my eyes for a moment, it seemed. Just a moment, with the last of the sunlight on my face, lulling me to rest.

It was the silence that made me open my eyes.

Somewhere in the distance was the thunder and the wind and the rush of rain, but the pond had fallen still. Del was floating facedown on the water, her long dark hair streaming around her. At first I thought she was playing, but then the panic cut through me, cold and sharp as a blade. I swam to her and turned her over. I rushed her to the shore; I screamed her name and breathed into her mouth and pumped her chest, but she was gone.

I had closed my eyes for a breath, and she had slipped away.

I hardly remember carrying her back to my parents. But I will never forget the wail of my mother, the tears of my father. I will never forget feeling my life rend in two: with Del and without Del.

That was four years ago. And grief is a long, difficult process, especially when it is so racked by guilt. I still blame myself—I should have said no to the pond. I should have kept my eyes open. I should have never closed them while she swam, not even for a breath.

A month after I lost my sister, I had a dream where a goddess came to me and said, “I can take away the pain of your loss. I will cut out the shape of your grief, but I will have to also cull the memories of your sister. It will be as if Del had never been born, as if her life had never twined with yours for seven years. Would you choose that, to ease your suffering? To be able to draw a full breath again, to live a carefree life once more?”

I didn’t even hesitate. I could barely look the goddess in the eye, but I firmly said, “No.”

Not even for a moment would I trade my pain to erase Del’s life.

This has gone longer than I anticipated, but I know what it feels like to lose someone you love. To feel as if you’re left behind, or like your life is in shambles and there’s no guidebook to tell you how to stitch it back together.

But time will slowly heal you, as it is doing for me. There are good days and there are difficult days. Your grief will never fully fade; it will always be with you—a shadow you carry in your soul—but it will become fainter as your life becomes brighter. You will learn to live outside of it again, as impossible as that may sound. Others who share your pain will also help you heal. Because you are not alone. Not in your fear or your grief or your hopes or your dreams.

You are not alone.