Vitamin D deficiency

You found the hat in the lost-and-found box three months after Marcus left. It wasn't even his style—a brown corduroy thing with a feather that looked like something a hipster would wear ironically. But you remembered him trying it on that rainy afternoon in the thrift store, how he'd tilted his head and said, 'What do you think? Should I become a hat guy?' and you'd laughed, not knowing then that hat guys were the least of what you'd have to worry about.

The vitamin bottles sat on your nightstand, a colorful row of promises you couldn't keep yourself. Vitamin D for the sunlight you avoided, Vitamin B12 for energy you couldn't summon, Vitamin E for your skin that had started looking older since you stopped sleeping properly. Marcus had been the one who researched supplements, who created spreadsheets tracking your intake, who believed that if you just optimized every variable, you could optimize your life itself. But he'd left behind the optimized version of himself—the one who didn't need you anymore—and taken the spreadsheet with him.

Your friend Elena had started suggesting you date again. 'It's been six months,' she said over coffee yesterday. 'You're still young. This is prime time.' You'd watched steam rise from your cup, thought about how water could exist as ice, liquid, and gas—how the same substance could be completely different depending on conditions. Marcus had been water to your ice. You were still figuring out what form you'd take next.

The office had changed too. Sarah from accounting was pregnant now, glowing with that terrifying certainty of people who had successfully completed biological imperatives you hadn't even attempted. Everyone asked when you'd find someone, as if relationships were tasks on a checklist, achievable through adequate effort and proper resource allocation. They didn't understand that losing someone wasn't about their absence—it was about the version of yourself that had only existed when they were there.

You picked up Marcus's hat and put it on. The feather drooped over your forehead. Outside, rain streaked the window like the world was trying to wash itself clean. You swallowed your vitamins without water, letting them dissolve slowly on your tongue—bitter, chemical, necessary. Somewhere out there, Marcus was probably wearing someone else's hat. But here, in this room that was still half-arranged around a ghost, you finally understood what he'd meant when he said people can only grow in the direction of their wounds.

The hat stayed on your head. You didn't take it off.