Dead To Me – Chapter 1 – October 18, 2025

October 18, 2023.

10:13 a.m.

I know the exact time because grief is rude like that. It doesn’t just ruin your life. It becomes organized. Precise. It labels boxes and brands moments into your skin. 

10:13 a.m. was the time they fixed for Andrew P.’s death. Not the time I found out. Not the time I understood it. Just the official time his life ended somewhere between twisted metal, shattered glass, and a voice that was definitely not his.

He is dead. Really dead.

That still sounds dramatic in my head, even now, two years later. Like something a woman in a black dress says in a courtroom scene. But there’s no better word for it. 

Gone is too soft. 

Passed sounds polite. 

Lost makes it sound like there’s still a chance someone might find him if they check under the seat.

He is dead.

But not to me. 

Not in the ways that count. Not in the stupid little places. Not in the way I still expect to see his name in my inbox. Not in the way I still remember the layout of his apartment better than some places I actually live in now. Not in the way my body still knows what it felt like to fall asleep with one leg thrown over his, the weight of him a familiar anchor in the dark.

Today is October 18, 2025.

Two years.

Two years of carrying him around like a private country no one else can enter. 

I am writing this because I cannot keep saying “I’m okay” with a straight face. Because grief gets boring in public. Because people stop asking after the first year, then they really stop after the second. Because there are things I still cannot say out loud without feeling ridiculous.

Mostly, I’m writing this because I need to do something cruel and necessary.

I need to let him stay dead.

I need to make Andrew P. dead to me.

Not unloved. Not forgotten. Just… no longer the center of every room inside me.

So I’ll start where all bad decisions and some good love stories start.

At a party I almost didn’t go to.

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