The first week without Jasmine was unbearable. It wasn't just loneliness—it was the violent, clawing absence of something Cameron had spent years building her world around. Every breath felt foreign, every hour stretched too long, too empty. She had convinced herself that losing Jasmine was an impossibility, that even in their worst moments, they would always find their way back to each other. But the silence between them was absolute.
It started with small things. Cameron reaching for her phone without thinking, her fingers hovering over Jasmine's name, aching for the rhythm of their conversations. She'd type out a message—sometimes an apology, sometimes a joke Jasmine would have laughed at, sometimes just a simple, desperate Are you there?—but she never pressed send. Instead, she let the words linger until the screen dimmed, swallowing her pleas into nothingness.
By the second week, the quiet had become suffocating. She filled it the only way she knew how. Bottles lined her nightstand, the familiar burn of whiskey dulling the edges of her grief just enough to function—just enough to forget, if only for a moment. But it wasn't the same. Nothing was. Drinking used to be an escape, a way to numb herself in Jasmine's absence, but now that absence was permanent. No amount of alcohol could erase the fact that Jasmine was never coming back.
She stopped going to work. Stopped checking emails. Stopped eating anything that didn't come from a delivery app. The walls of her apartment became both sanctuary and prison, a space where time blurred together in a haze of exhaustion and self-destruction. Days passed in a cycle of fitful sleep and mindless indulgence, the television playing in the background just to make the silence feel less like a graveyard.
One night, she found herself on the floor of her bathroom, the cold tiles grounding her in a way nothing else could. She wasn't even sure how she got there—one moment, she had been sitting on her bed, the next she was here, staring at her own reflection in the mirror above the sink. Her eyes were bloodshot, dark circles staining her skin like bruises. She looked hollow. Depleted. A ghost of herself.
"This is what you wanted, right?" she whispered to no one, her voice hoarse. "To be alone?"
The silence answered her.
By the third week, something in her broke. She hadn't cried when Jasmine left—not properly. She had been too numb, too shocked to process it in real-time. But grief had its own schedule, and one night, it hit her all at once. It started as a sharp ache in her chest, a tightness she couldn't shake, until suddenly she was gasping for air, her entire body trembling. She curled up in the corner of her bed, gripping the sheets like they could hold her together.
She sobbed until her throat ached, until she had nothing left to give. And when it was over, when she was left drained and empty, she realized something chilling:
She had no one to call.
Jasmine had been her person. The one who soothed her, who held her together even when she was the reason Cameron was falling apart in the first place. Without her, there was no safety net. No soft landing. Just an endless, spiraling descent into nothing.
She had to do something. Anything.
That was the only reason she called the therapist.
It wasn't hope. It wasn't even a real desire to get better. It was desperation, plain and simple. A last-ditch effort before she sank so far she couldn't crawl back out. She made the appointment in a daze, barely registering the voice on the other end confirming the time and date.
The day of the session, she almost didn't go. She sat on her couch, staring at the clock as the minutes passed, feeling the weight of indecision pressing against her ribs. It would be so easy to just let it go. To ignore the call for help she had made in a moment of weakness. But then she thought about the bathroom floor. About the silence. About the way Jasmine had looked at her before she walked away.
And she stood up.
The therapy office was smaller than she expected, tucked away in a quiet part of the city she never had reason to visit before. The waiting room smelled like lavender, the kind of forced calm that made her skin itch. She almost left right then, her fingers twitching towards the door handle, but before she could talk herself out of it, the receptionist called her name.
Dr. Roberts was young. Too young, almost. Cameron had expected someone older, someone who had lived long enough to have all the answers, but instead, she was greeted by a woman who looked barely out of her thirties, with sharp eyes and a patient smile.
Cameron sat stiffly in the chair across from her, arms crossed, body language screaming resistance.
"So," Dr. Roberts said, opening her notebook while adjusting in her seat. "What brings you here?"
Cameron let out a breathless laugh, shaking her head. "You ever have one of those moments where you realize you've completely ruined your life?"
Dr. Roberts didn't flinch. "More times than I can count."
That answer caught Cameron off guard. She had expected a clinical response, something detached and rehearsed. But this felt… real.
She swallowed. "I don't know where to start."
"Then don't." Dr. Roberts leaned back slightly, her expression open. "Start anywhere."
Cameron hesitated. Then, finally, she spoke.
"I lost someone," she admitted, voice quieter than she meant it to be. "Not like… death. But it feels like that."
Dr. Roberts nodded. "Grief isn't just for the dead."
Something about that sentence cracked something in Cameron's chest. Her throat tightened, and she had to look away, focusing on a spot on the floor.
"She was everything," Cameron murmured. "And now she's just… gone."
"Tell me about her."
Cameron exhaled shakily, pressing her palms against her thighs. And for the first time since Jasmine walked away, she did. She spoke about her. About their love, their chaos, their slow destruction. About the way they clung to each other even as they drowned. About the nights spent tangled in each other's arms, about the fights that left them both raw and bleeding. About how it felt like losing a limb, like being ripped from something that had been stitched into her skin.
Dr. Roberts listened. She didn't interrupt, didn't rush her. She just let Cameron spill it all, let the words tumble out like a confession she hadn't realized she needed to make.
When the words finally ran dry, when Cameron was left staring at her hands, feeling more exposed than she had in years, Dr. Roberts spoke.
"What if," she said carefully, "losing her isn't the worst thing that's ever happened to you?"
Cameron blinked. "Then what is?"
Dr. Roberts held her gaze. "Never finding out who you are without her."
Cameron didn't have an answer to that. Not yet.
But for the first time in weeks, she wanted to find one.