This morning I woke up and the world had already decided it was going to be a normal day.
The sun did its usual thing. The city made its usual noise. People laughed like there wasn’t a hole the size of a person in the middle of my chest. I lay there for a minute staring at the ceiling, waiting for something to change, like the universe might suddenly clear its throat and say, “Oh right, sorry, forgot. We’ll pause everything for you.”
Nothing paused.
I got up anyway. Did the whole performance – bathroom, water, phone. The part where you pretend your body belongs to you. The part where you put your face on like it’s an outfit.
Outside, everything moved at full speed and I felt like I was walking through glue. The street looks the same, the coffee place looks the same, the light changes at the same corners, but your insides are off by a mile. Like your life got swapped while you slept and nobody bothered to leave a note.
And then, of all stupid things, a guitar.
Just a few notes. Nothing dramatic. Someone playing on the sidewalk or through an open window, I couldn’t tell. But it was “our” song. The one we used to put on when the world felt like too much. The one where we’d dance like idiots in that tiny apartment, bumping into each other, laughing at nothing, loud in a space that barely fit us.
I hated how fast it got me.
One second I’m doing the “fine” face. Next second, my throat does that tightening thing, my eyes go hot, and my whole body is back in a room that doesn’t exist anymore.
That’s the part that’s hard to put into words. Grief isn’t only sadness. It’s time travel. It’s your nervous system kicking down a door, right there in the middle of Tuesday.
And love is still in there. Annoyingly. Persistently. Like it never got the memo that things ended or changed or fell apart or whatever word applies. Love just keeps showing up with a clipboard like, “Hi, yes, I still live here.”
Sometimes it shows up as a joke that slips out of my mouth before I can stop it, and then I hear myself laugh and I feel guilty for half a second, like I’m stealing a moment I haven’t earned.
Sometimes it’s quieter. A friend looks at me in a way that says, “I see what day you’re having,” and we don’t need to make it a whole conversation. Just that small shared human nod that makes the air feel less hostile.
And sometimes it’s brutal. Like the song. Like the memory arriving so vividly it brings the whole room with it, and then it leaves, and you’re standing there holding nothing, trying to act like your chest isn’t cracked open in public.
Today was all of that – a day where the world kept going and I had to keep going too, while carrying something invisible and heavy.
I’m trying to let it be messy without turning it into a problem I’m supposed to solve. Some moments hit like a wave, then they pull back, then they come again. My body learns, forgets, learns again. I don’t get to manage the timing. I just get to be here when it happens.
And the strangest part is this, the part I don’t really know how to explain without sounding like a greeting card.
Love stays.
Even when everything else feels wrong, even when the day looks normal on the outside, even when I’m standing at a crosswalk pretending I’m just another person waiting for the light.
Love stays, and grief is what it looks like in my hands.
Tuesday
(2023, © Julia Delaney)
Be Alive 🌱
Love ❤️, Julia
Healing through Loss
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