grief

Grief is a strange word. It doesn’t mean anything until you encounter it. Until it smacks you in the face with its harsh and unchanging reality

And then it means everything

Because loss, unlike other fickle emotions such as joy or happiness, isn’t temporary. It’s your new forever. Never ending. Never healing. Never getting better, despite what your therapist and your mom and your friends and your teacher and that one person who never really deigned to talk to you before might tell you

It’s just there. And somehow, everyone just expects you to live with it

To somehow, against all odds, keep going

But I can’t

I

Just

Can’t

Because how do I continue to live after losing the one person that I valued over life itself? How do I move on when I feel like my very being has been cleaved in half? Something, someone who was so intrinsically a part of me that I truly knew who they were just isn’t anymore

I want to go back. I want to scream and cry and rage until my voice is hoarse and my tear ducts are dry and I’ve driven everyone else away. Please don’t leave me. I don’t like who I am without you

If only had I said it earlier. Maybe, just maybe, it would have been different and you would still be here

But you’re gone, and I have nothing left to give

No way to make it right

And every day through every moment and every action it becomes more and more apparent that you aren’t there. I’ll never text you that tiktok and tell you that story and reminisce about times when life was so much simpler and easier and better

I feel you everywhere because I know you’re nowhere

And I know you’ll haunt my narrative forever