Did She Ever Exist?

Sometimes I have the strangest thought. A thought that feels almost impossible to admit out loud.

What if Kahlia wasn't ever really here?

Even writing those words feels wrong, of course she was here. I carried her, raised her, held her, argued with her, laughed with her, loved her. She existed. I know she did. So why does my mind sometimes ask the question anyway?

I don't think it's denial. If anything, it's the opposite. It's my brain trying to understand how someone can occupy so much of your life... and then leave so little evidence that they were ever here.

The world is remarkably good at carrying on. People go back to work, schools fill with new students, phone numbers stop appearing, social media stops reminding you, the café still opens, the supermarket still plays the same music, the seasons arrive exactly when they're supposed to.

It's almost offensive. How can everything still work?

And then there's something even stranger. People stop saying their name, not because they didn't matter, because they're trying not to upset you, or because they assume you've "moved forward." Or because time has quietly given them permission to forget. So, the conversations become fewer, the stories stop, the memories aren't shared. Until one day you realise... you might be the only person who said their name this week. It's a frightening thought. Because if nobody is talking about them... where do they exist?

Sometimes it feels like she's become invisible to everyone except me, like I'm carrying a whole person that the rest of the world can no longer see, and maybe that's where this strange question comes from.

Not...

"Did she exist?"

But...

"How can someone who was everything to me leave so little trace in the everyday world?"

I still expect her, sometimes I'll hear a song she would've loved, I'll see a ridiculous pair of shoes she'd have bought. I'll catch myself thinking,

"I have to tell Kahlia..."

And then there's nowhere for the thought to go. It simply... stops.

Maybe that's what grief really is. Thousands of interrupted thoughts, thousands of conversations with nowhere to land. Sometimes I wonder if it's easier for my brain to imagine she wasn't here at all, because if she never existed... then I don't have to explain where she went. But of course that isn't true, the problem isn't that she wasn't here, the problem is that she was…completely….wonderfully…unmistakably.

She left fingerprints everywhere; in the music I hear, the words I choose, the way I look at young women who remind me of her, the way I laugh, the way I love, the way I worry. She is still changing me, even though she's gone. I think that's the hardest part, the world measures existence by presence, by whether someone is physically here. But grief teaches you something different, someone can be absent... and still be profoundly present.

So perhaps the question was never really...

"Did she exist?"

Maybe the question is...

"How do I keep believing in a life that no longer has visible proof?"

The answer, I think, is this. They continue to exist wherever they changed someone, and Kahlia changed me completely. People may stop saying her name, the world may keep turning, the evidence may become quieter. But she existed, I know she did, because I'm living proof.