I Named My Loneliness After You

You left on a Tuesday. I remember because it rained, and the coffee I made that morning went cold sitting untouched on the windowsill. You left quietly—no screaming, no door slamming, no final hug. Just a half-empty closet and a silence that didn’t know how to leave with you.

I didn’t cry right away.

Instead, I folded your last shirt and placed it in a drawer I never opened again. I deleted your messages, then stared at my phone, waiting for a new one. I told myself you’d come back, that you just needed space. But space was all you gave me.

And space is a lonely place to live in.

That’s when the loneliness came.

Not as a flood, but as a shadow.

Soft at first. Then consuming.

I tried to ignore it. I worked longer hours, I walked longer roads. I smiled wider, laughed louder. I tried to fill the space you left behind with noise and people and plans. But none of it reached the hollow.

Eventually, I stopped fighting it.

I let the loneliness in.

But I couldn’t call it loneliness. That felt too vague, too distant from what it actually was.

So I gave it your name.

At first, I whispered it like a secret:

“I miss you,” I said, when no one was listening.

Then louder:

“Why did you go?”

Then loudest:

“Are you even thinking of me?”

Every night, I set a place for you in my head. I imagined your voice filling the room, your hands wrapped around a coffee cup, your eyes scanning a book you wouldn’t finish. I imagined your sigh when you didn’t know what to say, your fingers tracing invisible lines on my back when you couldn’t sleep. I kept you alive in fragments.

But you didn’t return.

You never returned.

Instead, my loneliness stayed.

It curled up beside me at night. It followed me into grocery stores and beneath streetlamps. It sat across from me at empty tables and leaned over my shoulder in quiet rooms. It knew me better than anyone ever had.

It remembered how I take my tea—two sugars, no milk. It remembered the way I tuck my hair behind my ear when I’m nervous. It knew every version of the smile I faked when someone asked, “Are you okay?”

So I gave up pretending.

And I named it after you.

Because you were no longer here.

But your absence still was.

Your name stopped being just five letters. It became a feeling. A weight. A weather.

It became the hush in a crowded room.

The pause before I say, “I’m fine.”

The empty chair in my favorite café.

The song I skip because it knows too much.

My friends told me to “move on.”

But how do you move on from a ghost you invited in?

How do you unwrite the poems you scribbled in someone’s name?

I couldn’t.

So I wrote to you instead. Not letters, but thoughts. Little pieces of myself in old notebooks and napkins. “Today, I saw a girl wearing your scarf.” “I had a dream you came back.” “Do you still smile with your eyes first?”

Sometimes I hated you. Other times I missed you. Mostly, I missed who I was when you were still here.

But here’s the thing about naming your loneliness: it makes you face it.

It stops being a monster in the closet.

It becomes a memory.

A lesson.

A mirror.

And slowly, ever so slowly, that name begins to lose its sharpness. It stops echoing in every corner of the room. It no longer tugs at your chest each morning. It becomes a part of the wallpaper, faded but there. Familiar, but no longer in control.

I still think of you, some days.

When it rains.

When I hear that song.

When I walk past the bookstore where we once spent hours debating which novel to buy.

But I’ve learned how to breathe without choking on your memory.

I’ve learned how to laugh without checking the door.

I’ve learned that some people don’t stay.

And that’s okay.

Because your name may still linger.

But my story keeps going.

And even though I once named my loneliness after you...

Today, I name my strength after me.