Charlotte Green

There is something more difficult in losing the partner than losing the lover. You can almost accept that the sex, the kissing, the spooning, the whispered conversations at 3 AM are all over.

What do you want me to say? Yes, I hate you because I’m jealous. I’m a petty, jealous, lame human being who is handicapped by her own inability to get past her childish emotions and see people as individuals.

Part of me wants to ask you to let me go, even though I know how ridiculous that is. If I really think about it, I understand that you are not intentionally stringing me along or periodically giving me false hope for something we might have in the future.

I have had several sexual partners in my life, but I won’t tell you how many, because it doesn’t matter.

When will I stop imagining what you look like with other people, or even how many of these “other people” have been a part of your life since I left?

It’s not that you’re sad. In fact, you’re happier than you’ve been in recent memory. You’re just not interested in doing things socially just for the sake of doing them.

There have been plenty of times where you’ve called me, drunk, at some ungodly hour. You’ve told me that you want me, that you need me, that you miss me.

In all seriousness, there is just an acute loneliness that tends to develop around the holidays, one painfully and obviously punctuated by the kissing ritual on New Year’s which seems to go around the party with a stamp and mark “together” and “alone” on people’s foreheads in bright red.