Still Here, Already Gone

on life and death and living somewhere in the middle of it all

I think (I know) I live in anticipatory grief.

Not occasionally. Not during major life transitions. Not when something is actually wrong. All the time.

It follows me around like a heavy cloud, turning ordinary moments into future memories before they’ve even happened.

Tonight my daughter didn’t want to go to bed. She wanted yoghurt. She wanted one more story. She wanted to wake up her brother and dance to ballet music. Then she asked me to lie with her until she fell asleep.

This is not unusual. She asks every night. This whole routine is every night.

And being completely honest, my first feeling is often annoyance. I have things to do. I want my evening back. I want twenty minutes where no one is touching me or asking me for anything. I want to scroll the internet mindlessly until my finger is numb and I’m blind with rage.

Then almost immediately another voice arrives.

You know this won’t last forever.

Soon enough she’ll ask me to leave. She’ll want privacy. She won’t need me to scratch her back while she falls asleep. She won’t want me to lie beside her while she tells me stories that make absolutely no sense. And then I’ll miss it. It’ll be in the rearview mirror giving me the middle finger for not appreciating it while it lasted.

So now I’m no longer annoyed. Now I’m guilty for having been annoyed.

And somehow I’ve managed to turn a perfectly normal bedtime into an emotional wrestling match with my future self.

I wish I could say this was unusual.

This is something I do constantly.

I won’t say I hear voices, but my internal monologue is loud. As loud as I am in real life, which is generally somewhere between a confident voice and addressing the back of the house.

(I have a desperate need to be heard and boy is it getting in my damn way.)

I do it with my parents too.

They’re both 80. There is still so much unresolved between us. Conversations we haven’t had. Things I wish they understood. Things I wish I could let go of. Things I probably should have figured out by now.

And every day—literally every day—I’ll remember that they will die. Not theoretically. Not someday in the distant future. Actually die.

And if I’m lucky, in the way life’s chapters are supposed to work, they’ll die before me. At this age, it could be any day. Could be today. Could be tomorrow.

It’s paralyzing if I let myself stay there too long.

Then I think about how devastated I’ll be when it happens. How much I’ll regret. How much I’ll wish I had asked, said, or understood.

But they aren’t dead.

They’re sitting somewhere in Toronto, very much alive.

And instead of talking to them, I’m preoccupied with how sad I’ll be when I can’t.

Then there’s Pepper.

He’s my dog. He’s been with me through everything. He has shown me the kind of unconditional love I didn’t know I still needed and, for as long as we’ve been together, he’s been my shadow. Always there. Always steady. Always beside me (the toilet, the shower, the foot of my bed).

The moment I got him, I made myself a promise. I promised I wouldn’t be the kind of dog owner who lets their dog fade slowly, past the point of dignity, past the point of peace, until the decision gets made by crisis rather than by love. I promised I would walk him across when the time came. That I would give him the final chapter he deserves.

Even if it felt too early.

Even if I still needed him.

Even if I wasn’t ready.

Because of my gratitude. Because of my love.

We’re not there yet. But we are close.

He’s still here. I still get to walk him. I still get to pick up his shit. He still follows me from room to room, a small warm presence I’ve taken for granted ten thousand times and will probably take for granted again tomorrow.

But I can’t seem to stay there with him.

I sit here crying, imagining how I’ll survive without him. Wondering what I’ll be like without my shadow. Trying to picture the exact shape of that silence.

And he’s right here.

Still here. And I’m already at the funeral.

I do it with Los Angeles too.

I complain about LA constantly. It’s dirty. It’s frustrating. It’s loaded with hopes and dreams and movie magic. It’s also full of broken dreams, strange little storefronts, and businesses that seem impossible to explain. Stores that sell only vacuums. Or only printer cartridges. Or only replacement remote controls. Places that somehow survive year after year despite the fact that I have never once seen another customer inside.

I’m generally convinced they exist for tax evasion but other times I find myself talking to the person behind the counter and wondering what happened.

Did they move here to be an actor?

Did they spend ten years testing for sitcoms before deciding they couldn’t take one more waiting room, one more callback, one more person saying, “You’re great, just not right for this”?

Did they once arrive convinced they were going to be somebody and then wake up one day realizing they were selling vacuums instead?

And are they happier now?

I genuinely wonder.

Because Los Angeles is a city built on ambition, but it’s also a city built on what happens after ambition. It’s filled with people who came here chasing one life and somehow ended up living another.

And yet I know I’m going to leave someday.

This isn’t my home. I’ve been here fifteen years, but it’s not my place. I’m too Eastern European for this much sunshine.

And when I leave, I already know exactly what I’ll miss.

The art. The weirdness. The feeling that you can find absolutely anything if you’re willing to drive twenty minutes. The fact that there is always an adult willing to go line dancing. Or karaoke. Or a costume party on a Tuesday. Or some strange S&M electro party where everyone has to wear black or they won’t get in.

(An actual thing I attended, for the record.)

I walk through Los Angeles grieving it before I’ve even left. Thinking about how nostalgic I’ll be. Thinking about how I’ll tell stories about it someday. Thinking about how I’ll sound when I say, “I used to live there.”

Meanwhile the city is still here. And so am I.

But instead of experiencing it, I’m standing outside the experience imagining my future sadness.

I think that’s what exhausts me. I’m so very tired and I don’t think it’s because I have a one year old.

It’s not parenting.

Not aging parents.

Not Pepper getting older.

Not Los Angeles.

The constant emotional time travel.

The feeling that every moment exists simultaneously as a present experience and a future loss. It’s like I’m carrying the grief twice.

Once now. And then again later when the thing actually ends.

I don’t know if there’s a solution. I wish this essay ended with some profound realization about mindfulness, or gratitude, or how to stay present.

It doesn’t.

Mostly I’ve just noticed that this is what I’ve been doing. Wondering how I might be able to shift it. Thinking if you’ve been living in this too? Pondering is there a name for this particular mental illness and are my readers going to diagnose me and do I like that or hate that for me?

Either way—

Hi.

From my mind’s mess to yours,

Ingrid