A Natalie Observed

Tag: Death

  • Yet.

    I do not want to write still. I am depressed. Trying to maintain any sort of existence feels heavy and burdensome. I know writing, finding time to reflect on what I am going through, is the right thing to do. It would help me navigate this. But I am struggling to want to sit and touch what this feels like. I want it to go away, for the weighted blanket to dissolve into wispy, floaty air. The weather is warmer lately, high sixties, seventies and a hint of eighties. We are all shedding layers to allow our skin to absorb the warmth of the sun between wafts of the cool breeze. Spring and Autumn are when the residents of Sacramento Valley take advantage of pleasurable heat. Heat that you plant and harvest your gardens in. Heat that allows families to gather for brisket on the barrel in the backyard. Heat mostly absent from wildfire unless it is not. Not the heat of July and August, the heat that brings children out to experiment with cooking eggs on cement or a brownie in a coffee mug. And yet, with the warmth happening now, I do not feel the recharging of the sun. I feel rigidity in my entire body as I try to carry myself through every day without having a complete mental breakdown. I am tired. I am sleeping more. I do not feel creative. I am struggling to win the “why am I doing this?” battle. I am depressed.

    I cannot even recount with significant detail the number of events this past week that contributed to my inward spiral. I am not sure if it is the fact you were honored by Washington State for your organ donation and I was not there. If it was the Seattle apartment charging me $5,131.67 for breaking our lease because you died and I could not live there anymore? Or was it the lingering reality that this was not where I thought I would be in my life? Or it is very high odds I will not have a family the way I thought I would? Or is it that today marks five months without you?

    I miss you terribly and every single thing that happens in my life, good or bad, reminds me that you are not here. How do I capture that feeling? The weight of loss. The layers of this grief, a grief that has lived in my body for so many years before you died and has decided now is the time for me to deal with it. I am somewhere between concrete and the soil. How do you write about that? How do you explain it to people? I spend my days thinking about it, telling myself to write it down so I can work it out, but then ultimately not being able to do anything. To write about what is happening, is to confront losing you. And it still feels impossible to comprehend.

    Thinking about how to talk about this horrible, excruciating feeling makes my heart rate jump 128 beats per minute and gives me a stomachache. It makes being in my body feel dreadful. I started working out every day because I need to feel anything else in my body. I need to feel it do something else but feel this pain. It is the closest I think I have ever understood what you talked about when you described missing riding your bike before your spinal injury. It feels like a sadistic takeover that makes my clothes seem inside out and full of static. This feeling, the feeling of Anguish, is foreign. I hope no one ever has to feel it like this. If I could devise a world without it, right now I would. It certainly is not worth it. 

    Part of me, somewhere deep, deep down inside, chimes in when I get to this place, when I get to the place where it certainly is not worth it. This Part chimes in with a small, barely audible “yet”. Then, without hesitation, I restate the phrase with yet added in. “It certainly is not worth it… yet.”. I do not know what that Part is or how I got so lucky to have her. I am definitely waking up and going through this for her. She needs me to see what “yet” is. I am very anxious to know.

  • In the Mud

    My therapy has turned into trying to make sense of the fact that our relationship was an abusive one. Abuse is black or white, yes or no, binary. You do not feel binary to me. I see nuance in the shape of us, in the color changes of our shadows. I held on so tightly to the idea that things were not as bad as they were because I loved you and our version of the future. We drew a life for us that was so magical and alluring and clung to it. We hid in the fantasy because the world of us was too toxic to confront. The image of us burrowing into a mud hole keeps coming up for me. We might be buried and unable to move, but we can still see the sun, right? You drank to not feel the cold, damp, discomfort of the mud. I did what I have always done since childhood. I overanalyzed and stayed in my brain so I did not have to feel what was in my body. When I do this severance, Depression enters my soul. You could see Depression in how messy the house was, in how behind I was on laundry, in my use of weed to avoid the body even more. I was embarrassed to have my parents see it, to see how poorly I was doing. But I needed them when you died. They had to come in. I finally could let someone else in to see I was that broken. I was embarrassed and also relieved. I needed someone else to know.

    I recently had a client-related reason to review the criteria for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and as I read the criteria aloud, I realized you checked every single box. I feel stupid for not seeing it until after you died. I feel stupid for ignoring the signs of the abuse. I feel stupid for wanting the story to be different, for not wanting to be the person who was stuck in a cycle with you. I feel stupid. Admitting our relationship was abusive means admitting that I am the fool who was educated enough to know she was being abused as it was happening, but stayed anyway. Hoped for better despite all the logic. I stayed and would have continued to stay because I loved you and wanted to believe in the version of reality where things were not what they were, but you died. That reality never happened and now it never will. One thing that is the same now as it was before you died: I will never know if you would have gotten better, if the therapy would have worked, if you would have healed and stopped drinking. I wanted that for you. For us. You deserved it. You deserved to live a life out of the mud. But I was the only one who believed that and it takes two people to know things can be different for change to occur.

    I am trying to find support groups for people like me, people who realized they were in an abusive relationship and need other people like them to talk to about it, but it’s been difficult. Small towns have smaller resources. Part of me regrets moving because the things I need for healing absolutely are in Seattle. There was recently a support group that met in person in Seattle for Young Widows. Hi! I know of several grief support groups and retreats in Seattle and I even know the people who run them. Yes, please! I know in Seattle I could find the domestic violence support groups for women like me. I am lonely in this. I am lonely trying to make sense of what my life is now, in my despair that I have to be here trying to heal from not only your loss, but your rapture.

    Because I am lonely, I thought about volunteering with kids, with the humans who can still be saved from the harm adults cause. On a preliminary search, several organizations came up who help children with disabilities get outside. I thought of you. I thought of your work with Richie, of the amazing heart you have for kids who, like you, needed someone to see them. We could have had an amazing life here in Chico if you had healed. If you could come out of the mud with me. You had so much to give and gave whatever you could. The worst of you made the best lessons for all of us. The best of you made the most beautiful and long-lasting impressions. I still see you everywhere and feel warmth. Even in the mud we were warm and there was love. Nothing and everything is black or white about that. It’s both.

  • Party Tricks and a Birthday

    My latest party trick is having a panic attack when I am surprised by the sound of sirens or see a gurney. I have you to thank for that. Last week, I was in the nail salon when a patron lost consciousness and hit their head. I did not see what happened but heard the thud of an untethered head hit the floor. Fifteen minutes later, an ambulance came. No sirens alerted me to anything going on, so it was business as usual for me as the technician buffed and shined my destroyed nail beds. Then I watched them roll the gurney in and I felt my chest tighten as images of you on a gurney flashed into my mind. Do I take my backpack with me? When do I call your dad? Who is going to clean up all the medical supplies strewn all over our apartment? Your vomit is still on the floor by the dining room chair where I found you. They said they got a heartbeat, which is good, right? The image of the banana bag hanging from the hook in our living room ceiling flashed in my brain as I watched two EMTs help a young woman onto the gurney. Tears welled, pooled, and fell down my face.  I just need to make it through this appointment. Box breath, Natalie. You cannot hyperventilate and have a visible panic attack in public. Is this really happening? Fuck. I did not know I would have PTSD flashbacks like this.  I called my mom afterwards because I needed someone to know I had a panic attack when a woman needed medical attention at the nail salon.

    The next day, I explained to my dad what happened over lunch at Burger’s and Brews. We sat outside as the temperature hovered around 64 degrees Fahrenheit making Spring feel touchable. Not five minutes after I explained the panic attack, do I hear the sound of sirens coming from behind me. Chest tightened, heart raced, tears poured out of my eyes. The image of me talking to the ambulance driver as I sat in the front seat about how strange this all was. People really do pull over when the lights and sounds are on. I have always wondered. I said that to the ambulance driver and explained to him that I am a therapist, that I understand what I am going through would come back to haunt me. Dad held my hand as I closed my eyes and tried to catch my breath. Picture the box, Natalie. Out, …2…3…4… Hold, … 2… 3… 4… Inhale… 2… 3… 4… and so on. I think it lasted five minutes. Part of me feels validated that my dad witnessed it. I am not being dramatic or making my situation worse through a story. I hear sirens from behind me and have a panic attack. That happened. It happened a couple weeks ago while on a walk with mom and was happening again at lunch. I have data to validate an experience. I am not crazy.

    Tomorrow you would have turned 42. 42. I always felt a tremendous responsibility and honor in making your birthdays a big deal. We took trips or had nice dinners because I think it mattered that you knew how much I loved that you were born. That you came into my life. That you existed. And then there is this year, the first time I mark your birthday after you died. I do not know what to do. It feels too soon to have composed some poetic idea for how to mark the day.  I researched beach vacations because we loved the beach together and I would love to have an experience of my anxiety melting into the rhythm of ocean waves. I pondered Disneyland because you would have wanted me to experience that kind of adrenaline joy. Financially none of that made sense. I cannot afford the time off given the six weeks I have missed since you died. I ordered a carrot cake from Mim’s Bakery. I Googled “what to put on a dead person’s cake” because I do not know what to say. Heather suggested a quote from your favorite author, so I looked up Gabriel García Márquez quotes as I know he was one of your favorites. There is always something left to love. I feel like a fraud because I have not read the book. I am terrified of discovering it has some meaning that is not what I am making of it. Also, only having the wherewithal for a cake feels substandard. This is not representative of how I feel about you, but then again, nothing right now feels adequate. You are having panic attacks multiple days in a row, Natalie. A Cake is enough. He would have loved a cake.

    That said, for you there is always something left to love. Even in the darkest moments of this experience, there is something left. Parts of you are here with me still as I wrestle with how to be a human in the wake of your absence. I know it is because of you I will learn the depths of what I am capable. What a gift you were and are to me. For all the complications of this story, at least that piece I know is real and true. I am not crazy. You existed and mattered. 42 years later and you still matter a great deal. I wish you were here so I could tell you all this, but you are not because you died. Tomorrow is your birthday, and we are not going to dinner or having a celebration because you died.

    What the fuck?

  • A Bird Without Song

    I wore your shirt today. The one I bought you before you died. We were in University Village and decided to treat ourselves to a nice article of clothing as part of our effort to look toward a different future. I received several compliments from strangers, from a client, and from my mother on this shirt, the shirt I bought you, the shirt that is yours. I cannot stop crying because you should be the one wearing it. But you are not here. You died. You will never wear any of your clothes again. I am not borrowing them. You do not get to see what I look like wearing them. They are remnants of you I claimed. I feel like I stole them but there is no one to steal them from. You died.

    You wore this shirt the weekend before you died. We went to Pacific Science Center on a date to celebrate our 4-year anniversary. We completely enjoyed ourselves, navigating from dinosaur fact to funhouse mirrors to science experiments to butterfly exhibit to the movie about blue whales. I agreed to go into the butterfly exhibit despite my strong aversion to the idea of bugs landing on me. I knew you would want to go inside and that you would hold my hand if I got anxious. You explained the different kinds of butterflies and where they were from. You told me how many days they spend in a cocoon and stood in awe next to me as we admired the largest butterfly in the world. At one point, something touched my head and I looked to you for reassurance that a butterfly had not landed. You assured me one had not, that it was the tree branch just above. I let out a sigh of relief and we quickly exited. Later in the evening when we were home you confessed that a butterfly did indeed land on my head, that you felt it best to lie to protect me from being scared. I kissed you. It was exactly the right thing to do. Four years of looking out for each other.

    Five days later, you died. A fact I still feel so stunned by 104 days later.

    In the month after you died, I dreamt about butterflies landing on me. I could not control it. They kept landing on me over and over and it was so stressful. I woke up in a panic, crying, not able to catch my breath. The following morning, when I went to get in the shower, a moth the size of my hand flew towards my face. I had to ask Phil to get rid of it because I could not.

    So I guess you are in the butterflies now. In the eery, uncomfortable feeling of wings against my skin. I am not sure it is cruel or poetic. Either way, you are not here to tell me the tiny lie that will make me feel safe enough to keep going. And I am trying so hard to hold on long enough to find a reason on my own.

  • 100 Days

    This past weekend, I bailed on social plans which was and still is a conundrum. I moved back to my hometown, but I have not lived here in almost 20 years. My social connections to this place are pale shadows of an adolescence riddled with anxiety, family of origin trauma, and a lack of confidence. I did not move out of Chico, I ran away from it. I am scared moving back here was a mistake I made in the shock of your death. I am scared I will wake up amidst this time stollen by Grief and not only not know myself, not have my life with you, but lack the social foundation to help me find who I am. This all touches into the deeper fears that I am a person who has had too much pain, that no one can help me hold it, and I will be alone forever. I digress.

    Part of bailing on social plans this past weekend was my failure to gain the momentum necessary to shower and get ready for the public consumption of my presence. I feel embarrassed to admit how hard it is to leave my home, to pretend like I care about what I look like, to prepare for the small talk that happens when people dance around knowing I am barely holding it together. So much of my life is spent in the chokehold of avoiding and then confronting Grief that I feel like I lost the ability to create small talk. The idea of pulling myself together on top of having to find parking on a Saturday night was too much. Instead, I planned to have an edible, take a bath, and watch the SNL 50th Anniversary Concert. As I told Heather, I did not go to the in-person show (Sorry, Deep Cuts and Lishbills), but I was attending a show in my living room… and in my heart. [insert winking emoji and laughing emoji here:_________].

    I really cannot digest how much delight watching that program brought me. I even watched it sober the next day with my dad to get a sense of “was it that good or was it the edible?”. Conclusion: it really was that good. I knew the words to every song. I have core memories associated to my parents teaching me via osmosis every artist. Dad listening to Nirvana and David Bowie. Mom exposing me to Lauren Hill, Devo and Cher. I can still see the endless piles of cds in and out of their cases (and sometimes in the wrong cases entirely) as they rotated in and out of the 6-cd changer in our living room. I made you listen to Tchaikovsky’s Peter and the Wolfe once, do you remember? That cd was a consistent rotation for me.

    It is through music that I learned the complexity of living, of a shared language that articulates culture, history, politics, and art. It is also through music that I found you. One of our first conversations was about how beautiful Matt Berninger’s voice was. Music ties all of our happy memories together. Memories of you and I dancing to Robyn in your living room when we first met. Of listening to the Classic Road Trip Playlist on our way to the beach. Of me teaching you about David Bowie, Prince, Broken Social Scene, and Beyonce while you taught me about The Boss, Billy Joel, Bon Iver, and where you were when you first heard Ghostland Observatory. Of you walking out to greet me in the morning with a pump-up song as if making some grand entrance, just to see me laugh. Of the moment the week before you died when I faked indignation when you could not name Bonnie Raitt as she prompted us to give them something to talk about.

    Music created shared space for us in a life that really only seemed to narrow for you. I soaked in the bath on Saturday night while Snoop lit joints on the stage at Radio City Music Hall. I felt a sense of awe that this particular group of artists was performing the music that punctuated my life, but I never experienced live in person. I had a moment of feeling deeply relaxed and connected with a part of myself I have not seen in so long: Joy. I started crying not because I was sad, but because I was relieved to know Joy was still in this shell of a human somewhere. Then Bonnie Raitt sang about making people love her when they do not, and I felt a little too Bridget Jones to stay in the bath. Joy is fleeting.

    This weekend marked 100 days since you died. All I want to do is talk to you about what I thought of this anniversary special, of realizing Joy was missing all this time. But you are not here. I have an event in my calendar for this coming weekend called Nacho Bowl. You accepted the invite. I suggested last year that we make the anniversary of your suicide attempt and resultant spinal cord injury have a different meaning, one steeped in something more joyful than all the pain it really represented. You liked the suggestion and, as we pulled apart some nachos made in our air fryer, Nacho Bowl was born. I cannot believe you are not here to do this with me, but I guess that is what my life is now. Shock that you are not here and my feeble attempts to continue trying to leave my house anyway.

    This picture popped up on my phone today. Your hair looks WILD and I think that must be why I took it. Taken on 2/17/23.

  • Death is Death

    I noticed my brain is not functioning well. Multiple times a day I ask myself if I ate a meal or drank water. Did I actually take out the trash? I called to cancel my medical insurance twice. I keep forgetting I already asked and answered these questions. I feel scattered. I ordered a habit tracker because I am worried about functioning. I feel like I forgot how. I did not consider how hard it would be to live alone. I have somehow managed to eat three meals every day, shower, make my bed, work, and walk Dottie enough there are no accidents in the house. I feel accomplished and barely able to do anything else.

    I downloaded a cleaning checklist that organizes various tasks over the course of a month to keep your home clean. I need things to help me stay organized. Tuesdays are for vacuuming the sofa, although I do not think I need to do that weekly as it seems excessive. I was too tired on Tuesday to complete this task, so I did it yesterday. As I vacuumed, I watched strands of your coarse, dirty-blonde hair succumb to the Dyson pull. I cannot stop thinking about it. Your hair. Should I have kept some? How do I live in a world where I will never touch it again? At the hospital, I kept running my fingers through it, feeling the spaces between curls, identifying all the grey you pretended was not there. As I find fragments of you in my new life here, I feel like I am getting rid of you and I feel guilty. There will be a time where I never vacuum your hair again and I do not understand how to fit that into this version of my world. I feel ridiculous for crying about it, but here I am. Crying about something as silly as your hair.

    I used to equate my divorce and all the events that created the divorce to feeling like a death. I hate myself for so naively writing about something I thought I understood. I look back at that person and feel sorry for how much she will learn about the true meaning of loss and pain. I wish I could tell her it only gets worse and that she really cannot imagine or prepare for it. That it will be hard to remember that she ate, drank water, and walked her dog. That she will cry over vacuuming hair. That she will wake up tomorrow and continue trying to do this all again despite a lot of evidence suggesting not to. The person I was had no idea about what she was talking. Divorce is not death, it is life. It is a beginning, a cleansing, a reason to vacuum. Death is death. It is forever. It is wondering if you should have vacuumed at all. It is not a new beginning and it totally fucking sucks.

  • Muscle Memory

    Last night, something funny and endearing happened on Big Bang Theory. I’m watching the series through because I have never seen it and I need dumb, low-stakes television. I turned to see if you also thought it was funny, my brain tricking me for a split second into thinking you were seated in your usual seat on the couch, but you were not there. You died. I lost language as I gasped for air between tears, attempting to recover from the impact of Grief Whiplash punching me in the gut. It took 93 days for me to look for you in the same room, a sadistic muscle memory and a refreshing reminder that I was not always devastated by you.

  • Bend

    When I cry, Dottie jumps into my lap and lays her chest on mine, her paws at the exact points where I imagine my lungs process oxygen and release carbon dioxide. This causes me to catch my breath, the pressure of her paws activating my Vagus nerve as tears fall on her tongue. It is never very long before my sobs stop. Dottie then moves off of me to sit guarding me diligently from a different angle of the room. I wish I could convey to Dottie how much it means to me that she is here dealing with me. Let this stand as an official note of my gratitude, not that she will ever know it.

    I canceled my workday on Tuesday because I could not stop crying. Before logging in for my own therapy, tears fell down my face. I knew at some point I would need to cancel work to cry, so I guess I have done that now. I described to my therapist how it felt to pack up mine and our life in five days. I explained how the sun was out for the entire trip until the last day. I expressed an incredible and inadequate amount of gratitude for my mom and Phil helping me. Then I sobbed as I described how stupid I felt finding the first, the second, the fifth, and the tenth bottle of vodka hidden in my home. Ten found in my home since the day you died. Ten. As I sit writing this in a new apartment in a new state, I still feel like I will find them and noticed I brace for impact when I open a drawer. I hope that stops.

    Yesterday, I had a massage with the masseuse who also does Reiki. She described feeling a lot of confusion as she focused on my heart chakra. “Yes, that’s about right” I muttered choking back tears. I am so confused. I feel like our relationship was not real. I can tell myself all the logic of why you hid so much alcohol in our home, of why you concealed it from me, from yourself, but I still feel like an idiot. While you lay unconscious in the hospital room, I told your family I thought things were getting better, but now I know just how much they were not. A bottle of vodka hit me in the face as your father and I pulled your clothes out of the closet to sort them. A bottle was hidden behind the recipe books. In a backpack. In a jacket. Under the bed. In a hat. In another hat. In the sock drawer. Your bedside table. Between couch cushions. I feel crazy. When was all of this happening while I lived and worked from our home?

    I am jealous of those who lose their loved ones, and they get to be angry because they died. Because the illness won. Because… insert any reason not related to killing yourself through alcohol overdose into the blank space here: _________________________. I hate myself for feeling jealous or admitting it. Loss is profound, unique, devastating, and breathtaking for everyone. I know that. I keep wondering if you even loved me or was I the gullible optimist who provided somewhere safe to stay? Would we ever have created our own family? Gotten married? Found happily ever after? I do not see how any of that would be possible with the secrets you kept and my senseless naivety. You died, and now I wonder these things. What would it be like to not have to wonder? I will never know. You will never ever be here to again reassure me the way you used to. Instead, I sit here with Dottie on my chest, trying to remember how to breath so I can mitigate another panic attack.

    I set aside your clothes I thought would make an interesting quilt. Your dad helped me go through your closet and told me stories about the memories he had with you in the clothes he knew. The bike race here. The camping trip there. A shirt from your mom’s race. A New Orleans Saints t-shirt. A Loyola sweatshirt. Shirts with bright bold patterns like you liked. Shirts I bought you. Shirts you kept that did not fit. They are sitting in a box marked “KLEENEX, SHEETS, ETC”. I am too angry and devastated to consider making something in your honor yet. I trust that this feeling will evolve, but right now, it is smothering me and I hate you for it.

    To quote Middle Kids song “Bend”:

    I am one bend away from a break

    I am one step away from the precipice of crazy

    I am holding all the pieces in place

    But maybe you’ve got to break me to see what I’m made of

  • Message Sent to Both Heather and Randy Separately on Wednesday:

    When Jeffrey and I first started dating, we got into a debate about the word ‘irregardless’. Jeffrey insisted it was not a word, that its meaning is duplicative of ‘regardless’ and that it’s grammatically incorrect to say ‘irregardless’. I googled it and found ‘irregardless’ in the Oxford English dictionary, among others. It does look like the word was added to the dictionary more recently because people say it so much. It’s considered a word even though irregardless and regardless have the same meaning. I loved that conversation so much. It was debate and learning and everything I love so much about what would become our relationship.

    My therapist said ‘irregardless’ during our session yesterday and I immediately thought of that memory. I couldn’t tell them because you look like an asshole if you point out something like a grammar error to another person Jeffrey worried he looked like an asshole when he pointed it out to me. But he didn’t. I like learning and I want to do things correctly. I asked Jeffrey what words meant all the time because I knew he would know and I could validate “that word means what I think it means”.

    I really feel like I’m never going to have that ever again. And it is suffocating.

  • Grief Makes New Sounds

    Yesterday during therapy I sobbed so intensely I heard a sound I never heard come out of my body. It was somewhere between the pitch a hiccup and hyperventilating. I do not know how to describe it. 

    Mom said I need to talk in therapy about what is going to happen next week, about walking into the home we shared, the home where I found you not breathing on our dining room floor. “It’s too soon in the grief process for you to have to be doing this”. As if I did not know. I knew my mom was right because the thought I had the two times she brought it up was, “why are you focusing on this? I don’t have a choice but to go there and pack up our things and pointing out what’s hard about it isn’t going to get all this stuff done.” Defensiveness is always holding up a mirror. 

    I am overwhelmed. There really is so much to do. I need to sort through your shirts and select the ones I want to keep so someone can help me make a quilt. I need to donate your wheel chair and other medical supplies to the organization who helped you get a wheel chair at no cost after your injury. I need to donate your Trike to the organization that helps folks with disabilities get outside, that helped you test ride different bikes to figure out which one was best for your accessibility needs. I could sell the Trike, it’s worth a lot of money, but that feels wrong when a grant helped you buy it. I need to give your dad space and time to identify what he wants from your things. I need to figure out what I can sell or give away as quickly as possible so I do not have to pack more than necessary. I need to coordinate for a junk person to take the things we cannot haul or donate ourselves. I need to clean and remove my existence from the home I lived in for 8 years, 1 spouse’s gender transition, 1 divorce, 1 pandemic, 1 graduate school degree, 1 engagement, 1 career ending and another starting, and 1 fiancé death. I need to decide what of your things I am not sure I will regret giving away. I plan to box them and write your name on the boxes with a Sharpie. Do I store those boxes in the new apartment or a storage unit? Do I want reminders of this confronting me daily or do I need to put them somewhere? 

    These questions feel impossible to answer. My mom is right, it is too soon. But I am not getting a choice in making decisions about my timeline for grief. I have to do all of this next week. I did not ask to or sign up for it, but this is happening. When I let in what I feel about being in our home, new noises reverberate through and out of my body. You died when I was not ready and now I have to participate in the next chapter of the trauma triggered by the worst day of my life, the day you died. I am not ready. It is too soon.

    I cannot decide if I want to sleep in the apartment or even be in there alone. My parents got a hotel room because eventually there will not be a bed in the place I am trying to remove my existence from. I cannot decide if I will regret not giving myself the time to be in our home, my home, the home the holds so much of my life, of who I am. The apartment holds every painful moment of my life and there are so many of them. It holds my survival and my accomplishments. How do I decide if I can handle being in there? How do I look at your jackets, fold them, and give them away? Will I miss the dumb dice you bought too many of? The coffee mug with yours and your uncle’s name on it? The duvets and bedding we picked out together. You used to sit in the green chair in the office and read a book while I worked. But I do not need the chair. The blankets hold your smell. They hold us. All of these things hold us. Hold a lifetime no longer happening. A dream that is a nightmare I cannot and will not ever wake up from.

    I told Heather I keep waiting for my life to get bigger than this grief, but that is not happening. The grief is everywhere I go. It is reflected on the face of everyone who sees me. Everything I do, I’m doing while Grief is sitting on my chest, punching me in the throat, mocking me.

    We leave on Friday morning. An 11 hour drive to the guillotine. I feel like I am preparing to stare down the sun. I know I will lose eyesight, but there is nothing I can do to stop it. I need to get used to looking at this duller version of the world, but its sepia tones are so muted and dystopian.

    What the fuck?