Separation Anxiety

by Laura Zigman

It’s hard for me to believe those moments ever happened; that I was ever in the middle of all that love, and time, and possibility, and that now I’m not. Life eventually takes away everyone and everything we love and leaves us bereft. Is that its sad lesson? That’s the only explanation I have for why I now wear the dog; my version of magical thinking: little tiny cracks are forming inside me every day and only the dog is keeping me from coming apart completely.

Each time that I ask myself the book’s central question, my answer is always the same: these used to give me joy but don’t anymore, because they only remind me of what isn’t anymore.

This is who I am now in middle age—lost and confused and shifting constantly between my own world and the real world.

I look at her face, her skin, trying to get a sense of how old she is. Younger than me, I’m sure—everyone is now—but beyond that, I’m not sure.

It’s excruciating

to watch someone disappear, slowly at first, and then quickly.

while it wasn’t something I bragged about on social media, since his churro or slice of pizza or chicken bake didn’t come with a side of organic broccoli or a soccer practice or a French horn lesson, it was something he liked to do—with me—and so, we’d do it.

Being a child’s primary focus is temporary, fleeting; I knew that the aperture was closing, that the light on me would eventually dim and I’d be replaced with friends.

No one ever wants to talk about anything to do with me, I’ve found, now that I’m fifty and invisible.

I try to take up less space and air than he does. It’s like I’ve been holding my breath since we met, unable to fully inhale or exhale; as if there isn’t enough room in the world for both of us.

She means “stuck” in the best possible way, though. She means: stuck together, like birds of a feather. She means: “You’re not just married. You’re family now. Because that’s what happens.”

to avoid the pain of memory, I’ll avoid this route, this way home, this reminder of this day and this moment leading up to this loss. The streets already seem unrecognizable. Soon they will feel as foreign to me as a moonscape. Grief obliterates the present, forcing you to relive the past and dread the future.

I can’t remember when I stopped looking at myself, when my face and body, once narrow and all sharp angles and dark shadows in tight pants and short skirts, filled and rounded with age; when I became unrecognizable to myself and invisible in the world.

Loss has made you afraid of life, but you have to stay open. Porous. You have to let all the available light—all the tiny shards of joy—still flow through you.” She closes her eyes. “Who knows what beauty the rest of the way will bring.”