“The emptiness, the dread, the endless loop—it all evaporated like it was never there. He made me feel seen. He made me feel safe. But now that he’s not here…” A black hole takes residence in my chest, sucking the life out of me. “I feel like I’m back from a funeral I can’t remember. I feel stuck again, grieving something we could’ve been. It’s like grieving Mom all over again. Except the difference is that he’s alive. I barely started making sense of what I felt for her and now I have to make sense of what I feel for him. I don’t want to be stuck, but I don’t know how to climb out.”
