event horizon

12th Apr, 2025

I'm gonna indulge a small and almost-dormant corner of my brain tonight, perhaps mostly for the metaphorical value.

I'm gonna write briefly about my ex-fiance.

Her name is Cera, something I feel comfortable sharing as its neither her legal name nor one she used predominantly anywhere online. It's just the one I and a few other close friends knew her by.

We were in a relationship for two years, which is not such a long time. We were engaged for two thirds of that, which was obviously way too hasty and yet I don't particularly regret it.

Our relationship didn't exactly have a smooth start. We'd been friends online for a while, inbetween my life full of distractions and hers full of as-yet unseen tragedies. Then she pulled me out of a week-long alcoholic spiral after I broke up with my best friend, and we fell in love.

I still miss her. It's been something to the effect of 16 months since we broke up, since we last spoke, and I still think of her regularly. Sometimes I still half-heartedly daydream of speaking to her again, or seeing her in the street one day somehow, against all odds.

I think I still love her as well, in a detached sort of way. I know that despite all my time spent moving on, I would still reply if she messaged me. I would still feel compelled to pick her up in a hug if I saw her. Yet, I don't actively want these things anymore. They're just truths now, written in my being.

Soulmates will do that to you.

She was, among other things, a compulsive liar. It didn't have to be important or consequential - she would simply lie because fiction came easier to her than reality.

It's not a very good survival strategy. Not for your friendships, not for your existence as a living organism, and certainly not for your sense of self. She tried to escape it a few times, but as our relationship decayed the old habits crept back in. She became more prone to it and less able to keep the stories straight.

On the morning of our breakup, she apologised for lying to me about a specific thing - she hadn't gone for a drive with her best friend the previous night, she'd just gotten in the car as an excuse to get away from the conversation we were having.

Except, that was never a lie she told me in the first place. She didn't tell me anything at all - simply disappeared from the conversation with halfhearted protests of being okay, she'll be back later.

I didn't bother to correct her. No reason to, at that point. And perhaps the reason for some of my current-day anxieties becomes clear as well.

She was many other things besides. An artist, a writer, a person. She loves Halo and Destiny2 and Undertale fanfiction. She passed on many of these loves to me. Others we already shared.

We would play Destiny2 together and find locations in the game we liked, sit our characters down side by side and and order each other Ubereats. The closest we could get to a date, of sorts. I miss those moments.

Three years ago - an insane and unreal amount of time - I went to visit her in Canada. To this day, those two weeks remain some of my loveliest and fondest memories, despite the bittersweet overtones. We did not do anything outrageously special or magnificent or notable.

We spent our time doing all the simple things distance had deprived us of - napping together most afternoons, going clothes shopping and buying groceries, cooking dinner for her family. The mundane and the ordinary. We tested the waters, found out what it would be like to live together. We found it to our liking.

We both had sex for the first time, a fact made all the more amusing by her mother's insistence we sleep in seperate rooms for exactly that reason. Before the trip, we were both exasperated and outraged by this - neither of us had any experience with that, we'd never even kissed before, we were both degrees of asexual. It wouldn't happen, and Cera was dishing out $500 for a sofa bed we didn't need.

That lasted all of 3 days, I think. It was lovely to discover we felt more comfortable with eachother than we had remotely expected. All the same, we did not act like rabbits. It was perhaps 3 or 4 nights at most, out of 14. It was comfortable and unique and for my part, I'm glad all of it happened.

She was rather good at writing poetry, and an enthusastic and remarkably talented singer (although I've met another pretty girl who beats her in both categories since then).

She coined (at least for me) the phrase, "Say it wrong, and fix it later."

In other words - better to say what you're feeling and figure out what you mean later, rather than let those feelings curdle and never go anywhere. Trust the people around you to assume the best of your intentions and words.

You might see how this is a little ironic, from her. But it's another thing that engraved itself upon me. I think it is good advice, for the most part.

Trust your friends. Speak to them. Believe that they see the best in you and they want to understand. They will help you fix it, if you give them something to work with.

🐝🐝🐝

I'm doing a passable job of writing something that perhaps seems impactful on the surface, but I don't actually have much of a point to get to tonight. I just wanted to share a few of the relics from my soul.

There's many people I've met since who I've fallen in love with. There's perhaps even two or three who I could claim to love in the same way, on the same level.

I don't think any of those loves degrades or de-emphasises the others. Some people just leave a mark on your soul, and I think its good to let that happen. It is good to reach out and leave those mementos with others, too.

Wherever my long-gone fiance is now, I sincerely and dearly hope she is happy, doing better than she was. Selfishly, I hope she still thinks of me. I am very much who am I because of her, and because of our parting. That will echo in me for a long time, I hope.

And yet others, I hope I never have to part from. I hope I am lucky enough to hold my loved ones in my heart always.

Stay safe, everyone 💚