Just.keep.breathing.

I like the feeling of being under water. I feel weightless and surrounded. The noises are dulled, and for once, I don’t mind the silence. I haven’t been much good at being silent lately. When I drive in the car, I turn the radio down, but I scream until my voice is hoarse. I’ve never done this before. I’ve never needed to. Under the water, I feel like no one can say anything that will hurt me. I won’t be able to hear it. Strangely, it’s the only time I feel safe.

Two full days have now passed since we cancelled the wedding. I’ve received the final email that came in response to my “Could you at least tell me why?”

“It came to a point where I couldn’t say that I wanted to go on with this,” he wrote. “Knowing what was waiting at the end of the tunnel didn’t carry me anymore.”

He told me just to throw out whatever I had left of his. But I bagged up most of his things and brought them to a charity shop. As I left, I noticed how many people looked actually grieved to be dropping things off. It occurred to me that these kinds of places must hold a lot of grief. I couldn’t, however, donate the sweater he proposed in or the sweater he wore for our engagement photos. Those I stuffed into a box, along with his wedding band, and took to the post office. I couldn’t keep those things anymore. I couldn’t spend any more time sitting on my floor, wearing his clothes and slipping his wedding band on and off my thumb.

I also sent another package. That one, I filled with the things people have given me as wedding gifts. I’m not talking about impersonal things like silverware, but about the apron with Mrs. C embroidered across the front and the letter C wall hanging. Those are the kind of things that are extra difficult to see. And those I mailed to the girl who would have been my sister-in-law, the girl who is married to his brother.

I’m nearly rid of everything. I’ve deleted his phone number, his email address, and his text messages. I no longer carry a photo of him in my wallet or have his photo on my cell phone. I thought I would print out all his emails before deleting them, but after printing off 61 pages and being only two months into our three-year relationship, I decided to stop. There were too many pages, too much love. I thought it would be painful to read the messages that we had written when we still couldn’t quite grasp that our feelings were mutual, but when I saw all those words I hadn’t read for years, I felt calmed somehow. “I still sometimes can’t believe that all this between us is real,” he’d written.  It helps me to think that, at some point, he did love me—that maybe in some strange way he might still—but for reasons I’ll never quite comprehend, things are over.

All of his pictures are gone from my parent’s house. When I got there yesterday, the family photo from Christmas was gone. The collage of photos from Paris was gone. The photo on the fridge from the Dominican Republic was gone. The photos have all been replaced with other photos of my brothers and their families. I’ve taken the pictures off my walls too, but I’ve left the frames up, empty. It somehow seems symbolic and necessary to do this. I’m not ready to replace anything yet.

Speaking of replacements, the dating comments have already started. “I know you’re not ready yet, but when you are, I know a really nice 29-year-old man who…” When the comments come, I smile politely, nod, but feel sickened at the thought of ever loving anyone else. “That’s farther than my long-term goals reach for the moment,” I want to say. “Right now, I’m just planning to stop all the clocks, sit in my wedding gown, and cry until a little boy called Pip comes into my life.”

“You’ll find someone,” people say.

“You’ve got everything going for you,” they tell me.

“Anyone would want to be with you.”

But I sob so hard that the muscles in my abdomen hurt, and I try to ignore that ever-present physical pain in my chest, and I mouth the words, “Yes, but he didn’t want me.”