For the day you find yourself crying in the shower…
It doesn’t make you too much or too weak, it makes you human.
Steady now, love. Steady.
This is not a day for hard and fast.
Slow down. All the way down.
Let your tears pour out of you. Hold yourself as your body thuds against the bathroom floor with each new sob and every ancient howl.
Today is not a day for beating up on yourself, for holding yourself to some standard you think others are holding you to.
Today is not a day for perfection.
(There are no days made for perfection in this being human, in this grief, not one.)
I know you miss her. Or I know you miss the idea of her, of what she might have been if things had been different. If she had been able to love you for exactly you and if she could have done the work to not be causing you harm, and harm and harm and harm, and instead give you the love you needed, and love and love and love.
I know you want that different life, the one you’ve played out in your mind since before you can even remember, the false promise of a life that kept you going back to her so many, many times.
The life you beat yourself up for wanting because you think it causes you more pain to dream when you know it is not possible to find her there. Not now. Not ever. Or not with her.
Now is not the time for beating yourself into tomorrow, love. It is never really the time for that.
Now is the time to feel it, all the way feel the longing, deep into your bones, and cry for her, like you didn’t know you had it in you to cry.
I know the grief feels like it will tear you apart if you stay with it for too long. I know it feels like there will never be another who can hold you through this, not in the way she did, or the way you needed her to but never all the way received. I know there is nothing anyone could say right now to make it feel better than it does, because yes, you loved her, and yes, you love her, and yes, she is gone and yes, nothing you can do will change that. Not now. Not ever really.
So allow yourself to feel it.
Feel the need you carry, the need you try to banish to the far corners of forget because you think it makes you too much for another person to know.
It doesn’t.
It makes you human.
Feel the pain of remembering all the times you called out for her and she never did fully hear you, or worse, the times she did hear you and ignored you anyway. The pain that had you crying out her name in the middle of the night, still, knowing she will not answer your call, but your body needed to scream out her name regardless. The pain you think makes you weak for giving it a voice.
It doesn’t.
It makes you human.
I wish there were antidotes on days like today. I wish there were words spoken or hands held to give some kind of solace for the pain you are feeling.
I know there is not.
I know there is nothing, but the pain and the grief and the tears and the longing. Oh, the longing.
There is only this. Here. Now. And you.
Slow down. Slow all the way down and feel all the feelings you think you shouldn’t be feeling. Slow down and hold yourself through it all, or, if you can, let me hold some of it with you.
I know I am not her. I know I will never be her and I know I cannot give you want you need now she is gone, not fully, not like you need from her. And perhaps there will never be another who can, and perhaps there will, and perhaps that is not for today.
But what is for today is you. Here. Now. You.
And me. Here. Staying.
So cry, my love, let the towel soak up your tears as you gently wrap it around your body, so you can feel them even closer.
Steady now, love. Steady.
Today is not the day for anything else.
