Torned Souls

23| my dead girlfriend

Tonight's kind of a catalyst for this post. I just received another message, and it's worse than any of the others.

My girlfriend died on the 7th of August, 2012. She was involved in a three car collision driving home from work when someone ran a red light. She passed away within minutes on the scene.

We had been dating for five years at that point. She wasn't big on the idea of marriage (it felt archaic, she said, gave her a weird vibe), but if she had been, I would have married her within three months of our relationship. 

She was vibrant; the kind of girl that would choose dare every time. She was happiest when camping, but a total technophile too. She always smelled like cinnamon.

That being said, she wasn't perfect. 

She always said something along the lines of, "If I kark it first, don't just say good things about me. I've never liked that. If you don't pay me out, you're doing me a disservice. I've got so many flaws, and that's just part of me." 

So, this is for Em: the music she said she liked and the music she actually liked were very different. Her idea of affection was a side-hug. She had really long toes, like a chimpanzee.

I know that's tangential, but I don't feel right discussing her without you having an idea of what she was like.

Onto the meat. Em had been dead for approaching thirteen months when she first messaged me.

September 4, 2013.

This is when it began. I had left Emily's Facebook account activated so I could send her the occasional message, post on her wall, go through her albums. It felt too final (and too un-Emily) to memorialize it. I 'share' access with her mother (Susan) - meaning, her mother has her login and password and has spent a total of approximately three minutes on the website (or on a computer, total). After a little confusion, I assumed it was her.

November 16th, 2013.

I had received confirmation from Susan that she hadn't logged in to Em's Facebook since the week of her death. Em knew a lot of people, so I instantly assumed this was one of her more tech savvy 'friends' fucking with me in the worst possible way.

I noticed pretty much immediately that whoever was chatting with me was recycling old messages from Em and my's shared chat history.

The 'the wheels on the bus' comment was from when we were discussing songs to play on a road trip that never eventuated. 'hello' happened a million times.

Around February 2014, Emily started tagging herself in my photos. 

I would get notifications for them, but the tag would generally always be removed by the time I got to it. The first time I actually caught one, it felt like someone had punched me in the gut. 

'She' would tag herself in spaces where it was plausible for her to be, or where she would usually hang out. I've got screenshots of two (from April and June; these are the only ones I've caught, so they're a little out of the timeline I'm trying to write out):

Around this period of time, I stopped being able to sleep. I was too angry to sleep.

She would tag herself in random photos every couple of weeks. The friends who noticed and said something thought it was a messed up bug; I found out recently that there have been friends who have noticed and didn't say anything.