The axe

on loss

The moment it happened, I froze, and all I could think of was how to undo this. I figured it would wash over if don’t make it bigger than it is, if I don’t think about it. That it would untangle itself, but what I would later realize is that this is not a messy hurdle we’d get out of, that was a clean cut, clear end.

I avoid naming it that in my head, because it would make it true.

I talk to Him, asking for signs, asking for answers, not really knowing what I am seeking. I do it unknowingly, the prayer slips amongst the other ones. I talk to you, seeking redemption.

But the ways I could fix this fail one after one, and now that I have exhausted my resources, and done my best bargaining, I tell myself we are through. That I can swallow the pill, I can handle the loss, it swallows me. The days melt into one long symphony of I miss you. In foreign places and new circumstances I always remember to miss you, the world spins again and again and I miss you. The weight crushes me, the wait feels endless. I am now condensed to the loss. I avoid mirrors and I avoid people. My friends from home applaud me for staying afloat, because it doesn’t look like I am someone who drowns in her own sobs midday over the loss of something she never fully had.

I search online for answers, for psych help, for estimates on how much longer I will feel like my world ended on a random day in September.

Sometimes I sit with that feeling and I ask it to leave, other times I am desperate to keep the last thing I have of you. And now I have built my life around feeling sad over this, around the loss, making space for the letdown. I lose sight of why I feel the way I do, I mourn you like a chore.

When I first felt love creeping in from under the door in 17 year old me’s bedroom, I described wanting to bottle that feeling up, to keep it safe, to use it as a reference, to pour it out and remember fondly. If the love was stored in that bottle, then grief came rushing in with an axe, aiming at it and swinging. The bottle shatters, the love is splattered on the ground and on the walls and I am on my knees gathering it into a puddle. The puddle has glass in it, the bottle is now gone, and there is blood everywhere.