The space we couldn't fill

I stared blankly at the inside of the shower, letting the water run down my face. I had that airport feeling – neither asleep nor fully awake, where sounds seemed to come from far away and nearby objects looked like half-filled shapes. What was the name of that painting with the empty diner, where the walls are white and the street outside is deserted, and there is almost no detail except for three people sitting quietly at the counter?
I felt as though I were inside that painting, but outside the frame – perhaps on the second floor of the building across the street, where the artist had rejected the very idea of detail altogether.

Without any conscious control over my actions, I picked up the shampoo bottle. Its gray coloring and sleek Helvetica font did little to relieve my hollow mood. The lines of text, printed evenly across its perfectly rounded surface, had been carefully arranged with great attention to style and spacing. They were composed entirely of focus-group-tested phrases and industry-standard adjectives, flowing with a rhythmic precision that, on the surface, sounded pleasant, almost poetic – but on closer inspection, said absolutely nothing.

It was at that moment it occurred to me that there was someone whose job it was to write that kind of text. It nearly made me shudder, but then I realized that whoever they were, their life probably wasn’t all that different from mine. The main difference, perhaps, was that their words were actually being published, in some form, and they were getting paid for it too.

As the water kept falling, it felt as though the weight of the world had settled into the pit of my stomach. My transition – this long journey toward becoming who I had always been – was nearing its end. And yet, the closer I drew to the person I had always been inside, the more I felt the distance between us growing – between me and her. We loved each other deeply, but love cannot always withstand the currents of change. It was no one’s fault – there were no villains in our story, only the quiet, inevitable realization that we no longer fit in the same space.

We shared so much, weathered storms together, and tried to hold on to what we had. But as I shed the last layers of the person I used to be, I noticed we were drifting apart. Not by choice, not out of anger or resentment. We were simply becoming different people, following our own truths. And as much as I loved her, as much as I hoped our paths would continue side by side, I knew, deep down, that they couldn’t.

Love doesn’t always conquer all, I suppose. We tried – we really did. But sometimes, no matter how much you want it, the currents of life carry you in different directions. And then you find yourself alone, not because someone left, but because the distance was inevitable. She had been my world for so long, and I still loved her – probably always would. But now we were on different paths, and that was all right. I wanted the best for her, truly, even if it no longer included me.

The water still ran over me as I stood there, letting the truth of it all sink in. I had no regrets, no anger. Perhaps a touch of sadness, but mostly peace. That is how life goes sometimes, isn’t it? You cannot force things to stay the same when everything around you is changing. Maybe, in the end, this was how it had to be – and maybe, just maybe, that was enough.