Submission 262

To my C,

I can’t believe almost a year has passed. It feels like I blinked, and now I’m here, and you are still gone. I used to dream about you every day and wake up feeling like my heart was shattering into a million pieces. Then I would spend the day replaying that afternoon in my head, replaying it so many times, almost hoping that if I thought about it intensely enough, I could somehow teleport back in time and save you.

Grief is gentler with me now. I can connect more with life. I still have very difficult days, when I feel so lonely, so fragile, and volatile. If this is how you felt, I am profoundly sorry if I ever made you feel like you couldn’t confide in me. But you removed yourself from us and from this earth too violently.

Someone once posed a question that I cannot get out of my head: what is the opposite of grief? There is life and death, joy and sorrow, love and hate. Does grief have an opposite? For me, the opposite of grief is our long summer walks, when lockdown restrictions were just being lifted. It felt like it was only the two of us, learning, experimenting, and flourishing together.

I miss you. I still love you. I think about you every day. We will meet one day. Until then, I want to find the will to keep learning and flourishing, despite your absence.