I’ve learned this about grief.
It is relentless and unexpected and somehow finds a way to make you feel lost without its presence.
It does not care if you just washed your hair and have plans for Saturday night but it never shows up for the pity party you spent your whole month planning.
It is pulling and bleeding and simultaneously gentle and cleansing.
Yesterday it was hot and screaming but tonight it is hollow and empty and I swear I feel it exhaling inside my bones even in the moments I’m not breathing.
It is terrifying and unfamiliar but some nights it feels more like home than my own bed ever will.
Some nights the grief is so beautiful that it tricks me into believing maybe the memory is still alive. But, boy, let me tell you there’s a more common grief that is far from beautiful.
In fact, sometimes grief is the ugliest shade of invisible blue the outside world never gets the chance to see.
Grief that makes you ask yourself if you’ve left a dent from falling to the bathroom floor. Again.
Grief that doesn’t think twice when it hits speed dial to ask for answers about car troubles or holiday plans or why life has to feel so hard.
It is every shape, every color, every day of the week ending in Y.
And, yet, grief becomes something our hearts learn to feel thankful for.
The begging for it to leave and the immediate longing it will soon return.
The only thing that feels like it’s here to stay in a world where everyone always leaves.
It is the tiny voice in the darkness that whispers, ever so softly, “I know sometimes it feels like I am gone forever, but I’ll always be waiting just around the corner.”
What once felt like the ending, grief turns into the beginning of so much more.