The Way Back Home

by Courtney Peppernell

You are never the same, not after such loss. It’s just like something inside you breaks and it never really heals—not completely. The skin may join again over the wound, but you’re still left with a scar. The ache never really goes away; it’s a ghost, always returning, forever haunting. It’s just, over time, your heart makes room for it. And in the space that it now haunts, the rest of your heart tries to fill itself with the courage to continue forward, compensating for a grief you never thought you would have to live with. It’s like breaking your right hand and learning to use your left hand, or losing your sense of taste and relying on the memory you had of strawberries, such sweetness. You grow into the space, and eventually it does not consume you.