Literally, of course. But also in the way people miss entire versions of themselves.

At this point, I miss both of them. I miss Harvey, and I miss Romeo. Their deaths mean different things. They left different ghosts behind.

When Romeo died, I was nineteen. Still at my first hospital. Still standing on the edge of adulthood, believing that whatever came next would make sense eventually. Losing him wasn’t some dramatic before-and-after moment. It wasn’t a movie scene where the color drains from the screen and the girl loses the light in her eyes.

Nothing that obvious.

It was a slow burn.

A candle left burning too long. Wallpaper fading in sunlight. Rot spreading beneath floorboards.

I wasn’t different overnight. I became different in increments so small I couldn’t see them happening. Then one day I looked back and realized I couldn’t find the girl I used to be.

This October will mark two years without Romeo.

I’ve gotten better at carrying the grief. Better at letting it exist without swallowing me whole. But Romeo’s death still feels like a marker in the road. A place I can point to and say: there. That’s where something changed.

That’s where I gave up on myself.

Not completely. That’s the strange thing.

People talk about giving up as if it’s passive. As if one day you simply stop caring.

I cared.

I still care.

I just became very good at choosing the opposite of what I wanted for myself.

There’s a particular kind of self-destruction that comes from watching yourself make bad decisions while fully understanding they’re bad. Romeo’s death became tangled up with that version of me. The version who stopped protecting herself.

And because memory is cruel, Romeo became a symbol of everything that came before.

Before I gained weight.

Before every mirror became a negotiation.

Before insecurity settled into my bones.

Before moving in with my boyfriend.

Before all the things that now separate my life into categories of then and now.

I know that version of me wasn’t perfect. Memory edits the footage. It softens the edges. One day I’ll probably become someone stronger, happier, and more whole than the girl I was at nineteen.

But grief doesn’t care about logic.

To grief, Romeo is not just Romeo.

He’s proof that something once existed.

Something alive. Something loved. Something gone.

Harvey is different.

When I think about Harvey, I don’t think about nostalgia. I think about change.

His death was sudden, and so was everything that followed it.

The months after losing him felt like standing in a house while someone quietly rearranged all the furniture in the dark. Nothing is where I left it. Nothing feels familiar. I keep reaching for things that aren’t there anymore.

And maybe that’s why missing him feels sharper.

Because Harvey forces me to acknowledge that life keeps moving whether I’m ready or not.

People ask if I’ll get another cat.

I don’t know.

Part of me doesn’t want to answer because answering feels like choosing. Choosing feels like acceptance. Acceptance feels like closing a door I’m still standing in front of.

I don’t want to stop missing him.

I don’t want to become the kind of person who can talk about him without feeling the ache.

I don’t want to admit that the world continued after he left it.

And I know how ridiculous this sounds.

I don’t want my cats to become symbols. I don’t want them to turn into some literary device from a coming-of-age novel. I don’t want Romeo to represent innocence or Harvey to represent transformation or any of the other metaphors people force onto things they love.

They were cats.

They were my cats.

But sometimes the things we love become landmarks anyway.

Not because we choose it.

Because grief builds monuments where the living once stood.

And now it feels like parts of me have died alongside them.

Not all at once.

Not dramatically.

Just piece by piece.

A version of me buried with Romeo.

Another version buried with Harvey.

And somewhere between those losses is the person I am now, still looking backward, still trying to find the shape of what was left behind.

There’s a part of me that keeps clawing at the past.

Not because it was perfect.

Not because I truly want to live there.

But because moving forward feels too much like admitting that those chapters are over.

And I don’t think I’m ready to turn the page without them.