Red Flags

Five years. Five long years of searching led to this moment. Just one click, one simple button press, and the search would be over. She had been dreaming of this moment for so many years, but now that it’s here, she feels strangely hesitant. What if the time had been too long and it was in vain, or worse, what if it just led to rejection? It had been six years since they last spoke, six years since she vanished from the life of one of the only people she felt understood her.

After all, she was the one who disappeared, not them. She was the one who decided for herself that she was too much to handle and left before she could do more damage to what they had. She was the one who when faced with love and support chose distance and isolation. But even after that, she had the faintest hope that maybe things could be fixed. It would never be what it used to be, she wasn’t delusional after all, but she had an almost irrational hope that there was still something salvageable.

It started with a casual thought of wanting to check in like they used to after every big life event. That thought was smothered quickly by feelings of guilt that were only compounded by the realization that she had saved nothing. No phone contact, no messages, no emails. She realized that even if she wanted to reach out in that moment there was not a single way she could. So she swallowed her feelings, her regret, and loneliness and kept moving along in her self-isolation.

Every time something important or happy happened, her mind drifted to them and their relationship. She found herself almost exclaiming their name as if they would suddenly be there to praise them for working hard or laugh with them at whatever scarp of joy she managed to find or make. The joy made the loneliness grow after a while, making a hurtful beast inside her. If she couldn’t have this connection back, she couldn’t have connections at all.

When the loneliness became too much to bear, she’d try again to find them. It was as distressing as it was soothing. The process would begin again in futility. She’d check every email account she made, even the ones meant for spam mail. She’d turn on old phones she never tossed, even the burners from college that were just for emergencies. She’d scour the internet for any trace, any combination of names, places, and relations she knew and could remember. And when it would turn up empty again, she’d feel the void and the beast consume her, fighting for who would win this time, self-destruction or lashing out at another sacrificial ‘savior’.

With each passing relationship, she’d try to bury and forget things, and with each and every breakup, the need for those old conversations would return. Therapists would tell her that she needed to let go and move forward. Partners would ask her to stop living in the past. Her heart would say to her to try one more time. The search became one of her few reasons to live, but one of her greatest self-harms in the process.

During the healthiest relationship she had ever been in, she made an off-handed comment about that old companion, immediately cringing at the thought of ruining things with her obsession once more. She found support instead of jealousy or hatred, and it broke her. The hole in her being that was once filled by that old flame was torn ragged as she tried to force her new love in where the flame once occupied.

With every passing event, she’d have a new name to call when she was happy, joyful, or sad. She’d find herself wanting to look less and less as time attempted to heal this angry wound. But with time comes nostalgia, and that nostalgic feeling would bring things back to the surface. First as a reminisced joyful moment, and then as a guilt for the time that had continued to pass. It became like a steadily simmering pot, never settling fully, but never threatening to boil over. Until the day she fought with her partner, something small and petty, it was something that lost meaning halfway through the argument, and yet that hurtful beast woke again.

A red flag was what it was referred to as. It was her biggest red flag, that no matter how much she searched for her former comfort or tried to fill it with a new one, she would never be whole again. She remembered the nights sleeping on the couch afterward, scared to be near someone who wasn’t able to match the comfort she needed. She could give her mind, body, and broken soul to this new love, but without closure, she would never feel whole. So she ran again.

She ran from the new love and tried with a new fervor to find her missing piece. She scoured and scoured, staying up late and checking every break from work. She felt parts of herself crumbling as she tried to find the solution to this deep soul rot. And with each day she felt her obsession becoming more and more futile and hollow. She began to just go through the movements, searching while trying to remember the moments that made her want to search in the first place.

Eventually, she lost the ability to remember their face, their voice, and the warmth they brought to her life. She just remembered the fact they were a comfort. She felt as if she lost herself along with the memories. And then it finally happened, she found a match. Her searching had finally captured a singular post, with a different title in a different place than she thought to look.

It was a whim, but she felt as if every memory came rushing back in dulled glory. She remembered bands they listened to, but not songs. She remembered places, but not reasons. Then she remembered them holding hands as she entered the courthouse and renounced her old life, giving herself the ability to choose happiness. She remembered how she cried on the car ride home from happiness and relief, and she remembered the love and support that she never saw again after they parted.

She knew she could potentially make it come back by pressing the button. It took her less than thirty minutes after finding that post to find the info she never found prior. She knew she could finally be rid of this red flag hanging over her if she could just press send on one simple email.

But she couldn’t. She found what she had been searching for, and now that it was all over, she couldn’t find the strength to conclude it. What if it had been too long, what if she was too late, what if she had hurt them so much that they had blocked her years ago and all of this was some sick obsession of hers? She was tired of the void growing, the beast lashing out, and the loneliness. She was tired of her self-imposed exile, and her unreasonable desire to end it.

She focused on the memory of the courthouse, of the car rides, of the tea breaks spent acting like the outside world couldn’t hurt them. But she had to remember the nights crying together in fear of politics and aggressors. She had to remember the times she supported them through their struggles and sadness. She had to remember that their relationship had been built on surviving shared trauma and wasn’t some one-sided salvation.

She realized that even if they could reconnect, she couldn’t just take from them again. She needed to offer the same comfort and support that she had missed for so many years. She swallowed her fear, her selfishness, and her desires. She braced herself for what might come next and vowed that if all she received was silence she would respect it and finally let go. Her search came to an end here and now.

She pressed send and waited.

It felt like three days, but might as well have been three lifetimes, glaring at her from her inbox was a message.

“How many red flags are you trying to raise?

It has been a bit.

Chat soon!”

As she clutched her phone to her chest, she felt the beginnings of being whole once more.