Imaginary

I had always been there for Emma. Always. From her first scraped knee on the playground to her sleepless nights drowning in tears she wouldn’t explain, I was the one constant in her life. Others came and went, but I stayed. I thought that meant something. I thought that meant everything.

For months, I’d been urging her to see someone. A therapist, a counselor—anyone who could help her piece herself back together. She would stare at me with those tired eyes, the weight of her world etched into her slumped shoulders. “I’m fine,” she’d say. But she wasn’t. I knew she wasn’t.

I didn’t give up. I pushed, gently at first, my words soft and encouraging, like cushioning a blade. But when softness failed, I leaned into the edge. “Emma, you’re not sleeping. You’re not eating. You’re barely holding it together. Please, just talk to someone.”

Eventually, she relented. Her “fine” cracked, and she made the call. I sat with her in the waiting room of her first appointment, the sterile smell of the office curling around us. She picked at the skin around her nails until crimson dots bloomed, but I didn’t stop her. I didn’t say a word.

That first session was hard for her. The therapist asked questions, and Emma’s answers were whispers buried in the folds of her lap. Her hands twisted together, and I watched the minutes drag by. But she went back. And again. Slowly, like a flower learning to trust the sun, she began to open.

Her laughter came back first. It was quiet, hesitant, as though testing its place in the world. Then came the walks, her steps purposeful as she reconnected with life outside the shell she’d built. Old friends resurfaced, her phone buzzing with invitations she once ignored. One morning, I caught her smiling at her reflection in the mirror—a sight so foreign I froze in awe.

At first, I was proud. This was the Emma I remembered, the vibrant, fierce spirit I’d always believed in. But as her light grew, I noticed something strange: I was fading.

It began with my hands. I’d reach for a book or a chair, and my fingers would pass through as though I were a ghost. At first, I laughed it off, telling myself it was fatigue or a trick of the mind. But then, one morning, I looked in the mirror and saw nothing. Or almost nothing. My outline was faint, a smudge in the corner of her world.

I wanted to tell her, but how could I explain? How could I tell her that the one who had been there for her since she was a little girl—since those days when she whispered secrets into the air and played in worlds of her own creation—was disappearing?

The worst part was Emma. At first, she noticed me less and less. She’d come home from therapy or lunch with friends, her face bright, and I’d call her name. Her eyes would flick toward me, but there was no recognition, no focus. I became the breeze that rustles leaves but is never seen, the faint whisper of familiarity she couldn’t grasp.

Weeks turned into months, and my voice weakened. I shouted her name into the echoing void of her mind, desperate to remind her I was still here. But the echoes never returned.

And Emma… Emma was thriving. She painted again, her canvases bursting with colors so alive they seemed to hum. She laughed with friends, her voice light and unburdened. Watching her, I felt an ache that was both pride and sorrow. She was healing. But in her healing, she was forgetting me.

I couldn’t let her go. I clung to every memory we’d shared. The day we built a blanket fort during a thunderstorm, the night she whispered that I was her anchor when her mind was a stormy sea. I replayed those moments like a mantra, weaving them into her dreams, my voice a thread in the fabric of her subconscious.

Sometimes she paused. Her brow would furrow, and for a fleeting second, it seemed like she remembered. But the moment always slipped away, leaving her laughter to fill the silence where my name used to be.

The fading wasn’t just physical. My thoughts unraveled, memories slipping through my fingers like sand. Who was I before Emma? Did I even exist before her? These questions gnawed at me, but I pushed them aside. My focus was Emma. It had to be Emma.

Desperation turned me into a shadow of who I’d been. I began carving myself into her world in ways I never had before. When she painted, I nudged her hand, guiding her brush toward shapes that felt familiar. When she laughed, I whispered in harmony, hoping she’d hear my voice in the melody. When she slept, I lingered at the edges of her dreams, begging her to notice. “Emma, I’m still here. Please don’t forget me.”

But it wasn’t enough. Each day, I dissolved further, like mist burned away by the rising sun. One morning, I reached for her shoulder, yearning to feel the warmth of her skin. My hand passed through her, leaving me hollow.

That evening, she stood in front of the mirror, brushing her hair. Her reflection glowed with a peace I’d fought so hard to give her. Her happiness was a blade cutting me free.

“Emma,” I whispered, my voice fragile as a dying ember. “Please, don’t let me go.”

She didn’t hear me. She couldn’t.

Summoning every fragment of myself, I etched my presence into her mind one last time. I painted my name onto the walls of her memories, carving myself into the cracks of her subconscious. The moments we shared flashed through her dreams, my presence a quiet plea.

In the final moments, I felt myself slip. My edges blurred, my essence scattering like ashes in the wind. Emma’s laughter filled the room, a sound so full of light it ached. She was texting a friend, her smile radiant, her joy unburdened.

And though I was gone, I hoped that in the spaces between her thoughts, in the quiet of her heart, a piece of me would remain—a whisper of what I’d been.