When Grief Moved In

It's finals week. I just transferred to a new school. This is my first semester there, and my exam is tomorrow. I need to be taking notes on the Crusades and Medieval Spain, but the black on my index cards are doodles of her name. Sketches of her face. Two years ago today, she had 12 days left on this earth and we didn't know, or maybe we did, but we didn't believe it. I didn't believe it. Our heroes are not supposed to die and our best friends aren't supposed to leave. She was both to me, and she died.

You would think that after experiencing loss, I would be able to describe the feeling of grief, but I still can't and doubt I ever will. I don't know how to "cheer up" for Christmas, how to tell my boss why my performance is lacking, or how to tell my best friend why I cancel all our dates.

"My chest feels like a black hole where every good thing is falling into and I don't know how to breathe anymore," would be what I would say if I could say it. Instead, I shrug my shoulders and give out excuses like candy.

"I'm just tired. I haven't been sleeping well. I caught a bug and I haven't shaken it yet," and so on.

I am a train ramming ahead at full speed while my engine room is shattering into shards of anguish. Loss has to be the sharpest sword I have ever tried to pull out of my chest.

Grief always visits my bedroom in a different suit. Sometimes he is soft and quiet, a gentle sadness that wells in my eyes and rolls down my cheeks. Whispers that soak the warm side of my pillow. Other times, Grief is a raging gladiator that tears at my flesh until my heart is exposed, beating into the air like a war drum as I sob. I've learned you can't hold Grief back and there is no controlling when or where he visits. The other day, he found me in the gym on the flat bench on chest day. I don't know what made my pectorals burn more, the weight of the bar or Grief himself.

So yet again, I sit here with Grief perched on my shoulders, with a playlist of sad piano songs open on my laptop. I look up to her photo pinned on the wall above my desk and I just sob. I sob because of the tragedy of a hero's death, of a victim who was never vindicated, of a person who I loved so much that, when she died, I died, too. I didn't think it was possible to miss someone this much, but it is and more. But the world stops for nothing and my train will have to keep moving, with or without an engine.

So it's back to Medieval Spain.