WYG Day 5: Grief Personified

    That one is an additional shadow that follows me everywhere. And I have a lot of shadows, some are faded with age, others are younger, more vibrant, larger, but that one, that one is different from the other extra shadows I have gathered in my life.

That one started out big, looming over everything. That one was colored red and black, and it threatened to swallow everything.

The most bothersome aspect of that one is that that one doesn’t speak. It doesn’t speak because it doesn’t have a mouth–it’s like smoke, almost solid enough to touch, but not quite. And some days it seems more solid than others, but mostly that one just hands in the background, sometimes blowing into my face, piercing the veil between my innermost heart–the very thing that makes me me–and touches me in such a way that the pain and grief are overwhelming and shocking.

I wish that one would speak. I do better with being able to speak, but clearly, if that one was going to speak, it would have by now. Tomorrow is two months, and I am expecting that things might be rough tomorrow.

That one is trying to tell me, I think, that I need to slow down, take in what has happened, and exist inside it as long as I need to. That one is not going to go away. It joins the grief shadows from my mother, my father, my first love who couldn’t love me in return because he was gay and couldn’t say it, who I thought was my last love, who shattered me, the friend who turned out to be a drunken asshole, and friends who have passed without me being able to actually talk to them before they went. Each of these grief shadows look different, act differently. Some of them talk to me–a little too much. But all of them have taken a backseat to that one.

That one feels like it’s always tugging at my pant legs, buzzing in my ear, appearing without warning or wanting in my brain when I don’t need it to. But it is appearing for a reason, right? What does That One have to say?

But That One doesn’t speak. And the other grief shadows like to give it space.

Maybe, as time goes on, That One will speak. Until then, I guess I just have to keep observing That One’s movements and learn to live within the smokiness.