Spiderman

I have never felt much of an urge to watch a Spider-Man movie, but recently I saw a review of the new one by someone I follow on Substack, neurospresso. They said, “The film made me wonder whether we’re all just walking collections of one another.” And now I’m fully ready to watch it, especially considering your love for the Spider-Verse.

I think watching it will be a practice in goodbye.

Even though you are now long gone, somewhere out there in the world, far away from me, I find myself seeing you and saying goodbye to you almost everywhere I go. At first, this was heart-wrenching, and sometimes it still is. But now it brings me some comfort, like a sad love song that stays with you after both people in it are gone.

Saying goodbye to you has taught me a lot about myself. I now see my role in what happened less through self-flagellation and more through acceptance, and with a hope that I won’t become defined by the bad I feel I inflicted on you, myself, and others.

I loved you, but in a way that left no space for your existence, let alone for your love to return to me. I’m sure that that hurt. And I regret reaching out repetitively that one night. I think this is one of my clearest regrets. 

I read an article by Lovette Jallow, When Rejection Sensitivity Becomes Emotional Coercion form 2025 that helped me understand some of this. She wrote:

“It’s someone rewriting my tone, my intentions, my boundaries - without my input. ‘Now, on top of being misread by the world, I’m being misread by people I thought would understand better.’ What they call a ‘trigger’ is often just my refusal to bend. And I’m no longer interested in performing emotional janitor work for people who won’t take responsibility for their own projections.”

Now I can love the memory of you and let it exist in me. There are so many parts of that memory that have helped me understand myself.

One random thing is gender. The more I know my own body, the more I realise how uncomfortable I have been with so many things I presented myself as. Some of them now feel more like a performance than something that is actually me.

Anyway, I’ll watch the movie next week and say my silent goodbyes again and again.

Caitlin