“Nostalgia is a file that removes the rough edges from the good old days.” ~ Doug Larson
I don’t miss Zinya.
I miss Jinya.
The real genia—the one who fought me for hours that became bigger than they should have been, the one who said things I told myself I’d never forgive, the one who was wrong for me in ways I pretended weren’t there—I got rid of them somewhere along the way.
I held back my smile. chemistry The way he got my sense of humor without having to explain it to me. The conversation that went on till dawn and was not over yet. Everything else I quietly dropped without realizing I was doing it.
I lost that version then. He is something I have lost.
He wasn’t something I lost. He was something I made.
Memory does not store things. It rewrites them. Every time I went back to thinking about Genia, I didn’t remember—I was painting again. And every time I repaint him, a little more of the ugly stuff fades away. After enough years, what I was left with wasn’t even a tangible memory. This was a portrait I made with one. be careful flattering Most are not true.
The genia in my head never fought with me. Never said anything that was wrong. Forever frozen in his best moments. Of course I miss him. I silently designed him to miss me for years without realizing what I was doing.
The real gin, though—I stopped eating properly for months because of it. Why can’t you sleep? Why have I spent so long crawling inside my own head that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to exist naturally. That was real. All of that actually happened.
I knew it the whole time. And still miss him anyway.
Because the Zinnia I made was much simpler than it actually was.
Here’s the part that finally opened something up in me. I wasn’t missing Zinya at all. I was missing who I was when she was still around.
My version of that. Everything felt upside down. What I was feeling, I was feeling, was nothing at half volume. I called it love, but honestly, it was more like slowly sinking and deciding that sinking was the real depth.
I laughed the other way around her. moved differently. I was somehow more switched on. And when it was over, the person was gone. Went with her as if she was always a part of her life and not really mine.
No one talks about that sadness. Lost yourself as well as the other person. Whoever you lose in that particular relationship, that particular version of yourself.
I spent so long making sure I was making Xenia sad. Lying awake thinking about him. Carrying on old conversations. And the whole time I was actually mourning a version of myself that wasn’t coming back. It’s a completely different loss, and I didn’t have words for it for a long time.
Then I ran into him again. years later There was no way I could avoid it. And maybe within ten minutes of standing there talking, I noticed something inside of me became very quiet. Nothing dramatic. The woman in front of me had almost nothing to do with the person I had been carrying all this time. Nostalgia hasn’t broken. It doesn’t even sting. It just fell flat, like a feeling that was gone before I could catch up.
Driving home, I kept landing on the same thing—I never missed Zinnia. I was missing a character I wrote. I spent years falling in love with my own stories about him.
What we had was real. The love was real. But you can truly love someone and still be truly awful together. Both things can live inside the same relationship at the same time. Couldn’t hold it for long. I kept reaching for a clearer story. Either it was beautiful and the ending ruined it, or it was broken from the start. Both easier than sitting with what was actually true.
What was actually true was true love and it was also impossible and both of those things were happening the whole time. The good moments were real. The loss was also real. It matters. This too had to end.
He was a person. We loved each other. It was not enough. That chapter is closed.
And the truth, even if quieter than the story I lived inside, is much lighter to carry.
about Salim Haider
Salim Haider writes essays on memory, grief, identity, and the unspoken parts of being human—anxiety, silence, time, loss, and what it means to exist in the gap between who we are and who we show the world. There is no advice. There is no answer. Just honest writing that explores what it’s like to be alive. Read more at haydervoice.com.
