I lay here, tears streaming down my face, feeling this familiar yet strange grief take over my body.

How could it possibly be over?

The shock of it reverberates through my body. You are my one. I know this. I know it in my heart, in my mind, in my body and in my soul. How could it possibly be over?

This makes no sense.

The grief is strong in my body. I have been with it before. Its presence has darkened my door a few times and I know that grief is a stubborn guest. Once grief shows up you have to let it move within you until it is ready to go. And it’s the only one that determines when that will be. It will rearrange things in your life to make room for itself, it will bellow out its haunting, cold cry whenever it wants to, and regardless of what you’re doing in that moment, you will submit to it, your breath short, your belly tight, your eyes watering.

Am I really never going to be in your arms again? Will I not feel your warm, sleepy body wrap itself around me? Are there going to be no more soft good mornings, your husky voice in my ear? What happens to the deep words shared over meals I lovingly prepared? What about the thousands of little intimate looks shared throughout our days? Where do my hands go now that they can no longer be held by yours? What about my lips? After finding yours, where else could they ever be lost? Where did everything we shared go?

How could it possibly be over?

I want nobody else. Right now in the world of people who surround me, I see no one else. I have been surrounded by people showering me with attention, politely, openly, directly desiring and actively seeking out my time, my presence, my body… I see them as if from afar, because I am still captured by you, taken by my love for you, because grief still has a hold of me, and will not let me free.

I am in no man’s land. What we had no longer exists. What is to come is not yet here. I don’t know what a life without you looks like yet. I remember it, but I no longer know it. So I exist. My life is still mine. So strange how some parts of it are untouched. My house, my haven, remains as it is. The loved ones I had are still present, loving me. I move through these familiar parts, as grief shifts me. I am being broken apart and made again.

I know that one day grief will unexpectedly pack itself up and leave, and that new love will come and wrap itself around me. I know that I will look into another set of eyes, be held by a new pair of arms, listen to another voice in my ear. I will love and be loved again. What we had will be snapshots of a former life keeping all the other former ones company in the back of my mind. We will replace each other. Someone else will prepare loving meals and sit across from you and marvel at your beautiful mind.

Then it will really all be over.