All Your Perfects

by Colleen Hoover

I feel weak for needing to grieve since no one has died. It doesn’t make sense that I grieve so much for those who never even existed.

This past year has been the absolute hardest of all the years. I’m losing faith. Losing interest. Losing hope.

Even without social media, not a single day goes by without being reminded that I might never be a mother.

Smiling used to come naturally to me, but almost every smile that appears on my face nowadays is a façade.

I swipe angrily at my tears. Of course he feels like he’s making love to a corpse. It’s because he is. I haven’t felt alive inside in years. I’ve slowly been rotting away, and that rot is now eating at my marriage to the point that I can no longer hide it.

But now I realize that tragedy can tear down even the strongest of things.