I sit in the grass after 8pm and watch the sunset. Sometimes I throw the ball for Dottie which signs say I should not do. Off leash time is in the morning before 8am. The sun lowers along the western horizon, evidenced by the sherbet yellow and oranges that reflect on windows around Meriam Park. Dottie rests after she wiggles on whatever last peed or died or shit on this grass. I listen to music in my headphones and the sounds of deep and meaningful life conversations float into my ears between songs to the rhythm of pickleballs on the courts.

I love this time of day. The sun is no longer blaring down on, thickening the feeling of the air, dulling the sensation of heat assaulting my skin. This time of day and this activity have become ritual. My apartment here is the first time I have ever had air conditioning and something about having all the windows shut feels suffocating. I have to actively not think about the lack of fresh air or I start to panic. I miss having my windows open. I miss the breeze off of the ocean, the smell of low tide. I miss the energy of a city’s worth of people thawing after winter. I spent sixteen years in that special space and while I know I was always grateful for it, I know how much I miss it is a special kind of grief I have yet to really tap into. Jeffrey died, and I left the place I called home for sixteen years. I left the apartment I lived in for eight. I left them overnight, with no real sense of what it would do to me to leave.

On the Wednesday before my birthday, I broke. I spent two weeks crying, grated raw by the reopening of what it feels like to forget the immense loneliness I carry since Jeffrey died, to feel the levity of falling for someone followed by losing them. I began processing some of the darkest memories from Jeffrey and my relationship in EMDR and something opened I could not contain or close. The intensity of the loneliness strangled me, as if I was steeping in an experience of my being I did not permit myself to feel for years. Loneliness permeated so much of my relationship with Jeffrey. I was alone navigating his precarious mental health, his addiction, his toxicity, and the abuse. To saturate myself in it because of the EMDR, because of what triggered when things ended with the person I dated recently, it is a darkness I wish on no one.

I reached a point where I told my mom I needed help with making a plan for my getting a break. My therapist was worried about my ability to work and function in my life. Do I need to take time off? Move back in with my mom? Am I ever going to have a normal life? In the process of opening up to her and my stepdad about what I was feeling, I realized I was carrying too much alone. That what ended with the person I dated was not simple. I still have so much to process about what took place in my relationship with Jeffery, what happened when he died. I feel ridiculous for not realizing how underwater I was when the newer relationship ended. Of course it was not business as usual. It was not “breakup as usual”. The first potential spark with someone after Jeffrey ended suddenly and it ended because of drinking. Of course I was fucked up from it.

I left that conversation with my parents and realized I needed to spend less time alone during the week. I needed to get back to having dinner with my parents more. With friends in this community as I make them. I made an appointment with psychiatrist to explore if there is a medication that would give me more capacity to be part of my own life. I am so drained at the end of a workday, being an agent in my own social planning is really difficult. I am still making myself dinner, keeping up with cleaning, showering, working out and making my bed almost every day. I am maintaining my job and managing my burn out. I am staying socially connected to my friends who are not local as much as I can. What I do not know and need professional help assessing is if where I am in my process of healing is where I am supposed to be, or if medication would help me access more repair.

Taking a medication feels scary. I took one in 2021, Lexapro, and it made me nauseated and I saw little impact. I felt like I was not consulted about it nor did I really think I needed to take it. Jeffrey was the one who thought I should explore it and I trusted his judgement. I feel embarrassed. Part of me did not want to do it, but Part of me knew Anxiety was part of my life. Could it be easier with a med? I wondered and so I tried it. I stopped taking it and did not refill. The doctor never followed up. I am scared I will not have consultative care. I am scared I will lose the connection to my body I worked so hard to repair this past year. What if I stop feeling as much? Or is that the problem? Am I feeling too much? I realized recently my hypervigilance on protecting my body is a symptom of the PTSD. It would be so nice to not be so aware of what I am feeling or be planning all the time for what I might feel. It would be nice to need less recovery time after something social. A couple weeks ago, I went to a friend’s pool party and needed the entire next day to rest and not speak to anyone. I am happy to do that, to give my body the time, but it is limiting. My capacity is limited.

I visited my uncle, my dad’s second brother, in Santa Cruz this past weekend. I needed a break from my life, one that required little funds. This is part of my new plan – who do I know that is willing to host me for very little budget (or free)? I can get there by car and maybe bring Dottie. I’ll entertain myself so you do not have to, I just need a break from my apartment, from my routine of working from home and sitting in my own shit. I finally understand what Judy meant when she advised playing pickleball as a solution to my grief, but I have no one to play with yet. While I am slowly rebuilding my life here in Chico, it is growing only as quickly as I have space for. It is a lot of energy to small talk and get to know people again. And as I discussed already, energy is limited.

Santa Cruz was this wonderful breath of fresh, ocean air. The air I miss so much. On Friday, I met my cousin and her lovely family in Scotts Valley. We watched her two-year-old son learn how his body maneuvers toys larger than him while eating a hot dog and drinking beer from a brewery. On Saturday, my Uncle and I took Dottie and his labrador, Ursa Minor, along the beach and watched as they ran after a tennis ball into the surf, the waves etching new patterns into shore. We got a breakfast burrito and watched surfers calculate their next moves. When we got back to my uncle’s, I read a book for the rest of the day, leaving only one time to walk Dottie back to Pleasure Point to watch why people hate us Californians so much – the happiness influenced by sunshine is palpable. While surfers waited for the next wave to crest, dogs trotted along the path with their matching owners (shaggy dogs for shaggy bicyclists, manicured dogs for polished homeowners nearby) and I soaked in the memory of what it feels like to have eighty-five degree summer heat cooled by the sea. That evening we went for pizza at the place we went to last time, the place where my dad’s jacket was stollen by the man my uncle knew from a rehab facility. We hoped the jacket served him well.

The last time I was in Santa Cruz was right after Jeffrey died and I do not really remember much about it. I had to look at pictures to remember if I even brought Dottie. While I can see she was there, I do not remember her being there. It was the few days after Christmas in 2024, less than two months after he died. It feels unsettling so much of that time is absent from my memory. I remember messaging Jeffrey’s dad pictures of the surfers in the waves and him telling me that’s where he and Jeffrey’s mom went. To go from there where I was so numb all the way to here feels like a massive accomplishment.

I sat in the front of the ambulance as the paramedic shepherded Jeffrey’s body along Leary Ave NW. He forgot he could not turn on Northlake Way which I knew because he said so aloud. “Well, I guess it’s good lights and sirens bypass traffic rules,” I told him. I have watched countless people over the years attempt to turn left from Fremont Ave N onto Northlake Way. They hold up traffic and get honked at before finally realizing they have no choice but to head south into Queen Anne. It is the reroute no one wants to do, but we have all been there. I told the paramedic I was a therapist as we passed Gasworks Park, that I knew my entire life was changing, that I knew I could not comprehend the trauma happening to me. I do not remember what he said in reply, but it was kind. Not judgmental.

Eight days later, I was in my car with my mom driving me down to California. My dad was in his car following us. I did not really get to say goodbye to the city I loved for so long. I miss the way my body felt as it shivered in response to the nibble of a breeze from the Puget Sound. I miss the warmth of the northern sun reminding me I was held by the world around me. As I sit here trying to remember what it felt like, tears fall down my face. Dottie looks at me worried and I attempt to count each blade of grass below my right hand. This is why we come out here – so I can literally get out of the apartment, get out of my own shit, and touch the grass. The sun is almost sunk beyond view. As we walk home, a pug barks his greeting from a second-floor balcony. He yaps at us every night. The pug has ritual also.

After we got home last night, I read about the mass shooting at Bite of Seattle and reflected on how strange it is that two places I love so much, Chico and Seattle, were impacted by gun violence in the same month. So many families newly introduced to the hell of traumatic grief. I do not know their loss like they do, but I do know the layers of a loss. The layers of both wanting to be in Seattle and never wanting to leave Chico again. The layers of being both in my body and outside of it. Of being grateful for this journey and so resentful I have to do it. I staddle this line between the shadows, holding what therapists refer to as “the both/and”.

I would like to note I did not have a panic attack while remembering how much I miss the Puget Sound Breeze or while writing this post. The EMDR is working. My capacity is improving. I am so tired. And, as usual, when I write these I come back to: I am so tired, which means I am alive.