“Nostalgia is a document that removes rough edges from the old days.” ~ Doug Larson
I do not miss Zinia.
I miss the Zinia I created.
The real Zinia – the one who fought for hours for me over something bigger than what should have been, the one who said what I told myself, I never forgave anyone wrong in the way I pretended not to be there – I got rid of everything along the way.
I kept laughing. Chemistry. How she got my joke without explanation. Conversations that run until Fajr and still do not feel finished. Anything else I dropped silently without noticing I was doing it.
Then I spent years missing that version. Like she is what I lost.
She is not something I have lost. She is something I built.
Memory does not store objects. It rewrites them. Every time I go back to thinking about Zinia, I do not remember, I was repainting. And every time I repaint her, some bad things are gone. After all these years, what I have left is even real memories. It’s a portrait I made from one. Be careful. Praise. Most are not true.
Zinia in my head never fought me. Never say anything wrong. Just stuck in her best moments forever. Of course I miss her. I quietly designed her to miss for years, not noticing what I was doing.
Real Zinia – She is the reason I stopped eating right for months. Why do not sleep. Why did I spend so much time in my head forgetting that it felt so normal? All of that really happened.
I knew it all the time. And still miss her.
Because the Zinia I built was easier to love than the real thing ever.
This is the part that finally broke something in me, I do not miss Zinia at all. I remember who I was when she was around.
My version. Everything turned out. Whatever I was feeling, I felt all there was, nothing in the middle of the episode. I called it love, but frankly it was like a gradual drowning and the realization that drowning was just a feeling of real depth.
I laughed differently from her around. Move differently. Like I was moving more and more. And when it was over, the man left. Went with her like he was always a part of her life and never really was mine.
No one talks about grief. Lose yourself with others. Losing someone you are in a certain relationship, a specific version of your own life.
It took me a long time to believe I was grieving Zinia. Sleep, wake up thinking of her. Go through the old conversation. And all the while I was really sorry for my version not coming back. That was a completely different loss and I did not have a word for it in a long time.
Then I ran to her again. A few years later. Where I have no escape. And about ten minutes of standing there talking, I noticed something quiet inside me. Nothing great. The women in front of me just have nothing to do with who I lead all the time. Feelings of pity did not break. It did not even bite. It just went out like a feeling that ended before I caught it.
Driving home, I continued to land – I never lost Zinia. I lost the characters I wrote. I spent years falling in love with my personal story about her.
What we have is real. Love is real. But you can love someone sincerely and still have a bad heart together. Both objects can live in the same relationship at the same time. For a long time I could not hold it. I kept looking for more beautiful things. Either it is clean and the finish destroys it or it is damaged from the beginning. Both are easier than sitting with what is real.
What is true is that it is true love and it is impossible and both things are happening all the time. Good times are real. The damage is also real. It matters. It also has to end.
She is a person. We fell in love. It is not enough. This chapter is closed.
And, of course, even when it’s quieter than the things I live inside, it’s lighter.
About Selim Hayder
Selim Hayder writes about memories, sorrows, identities, and the unspeakable parts of being human – the anxiety, the silence, the time, the loss, and the meaning that lies in the gap between who we are and who we show the world. No advice. No answer. Just honest writing that explores the feeling of being alive. Read more at haydervoice.com.
