I’m so entangled in my grief, that I no longer know where I start and it ends. Heavy sadness, crushing anxiety, and the constant wonder of what-if beg me to melt into my bed and let my brain rot into mush from staring at my phone, because maybe then I would forget. Maybe if I wasn’t constantly weighed down by my emotions, I could be normal again. I wouldn’t be the girl everyone stared at because she left class crying, day after day. If I weren’t affected by this fundamental loss, maybe, just maybe, I could be happy.

I could walk through my new house, with my new family, in a new town, and feel like it’s home. I wouldn’t think about how there isn’t a single trace of you left to remind me of what was. Or when I make the trip up to Michigan to see your family and the places you grew up, I wouldn’t have the bittersweet taste in the back of my throat, because it’s the only place where everything feels right. I wouldn’t hold resentment towards the fact that I have to mourn the life I could’ve had.

But no matter how often I think about what-ifs and maybes, it will never change the day that you left me. The sinking feeling I feel deep inside, will ultimately forever reside stitched into my soul, refusing to ever let go. Even when I feel as if I’ve finally made peace, there will still come those days where the shock hits me just as deep, as it did on that day we all sat waiting around, for the inevitable to come, when our feet would fall through the ground.

As much as I sometimes wish I could magically have the pain wiped from my system, it’s what reminds me to remember. If no tears fell from my eyes, because I no longer cared about the difference between today and five years ago, what would that make me? Yes, I could go on and grow up without the hole in my heart, but if I didn’t even realize what I was missing, how could I ever say I truly loved you?

This terrible gut wrenching pain is what keeps me tethered to the past and my memories of when I still had you. 

Yes, I cried when there was only a picture of you sitting on a chair, when I wish it could be the real you watching my sister get married. Yes, everytime I wake up from dreams of where you miraculously came back from the dead, my face feels tight from the dried tears on my cheek. But it means I remember the time you were still here, and I’d rather feel the pain than to have forgotten it all and live in ignorance. The hardest thing I did, and still do, is live through the grief of losing my mom, but it’s never going away, nor would I want it to.