Chapter 58
Chapter Fifty-Eight
HAPPILY EVER AFTER
Will
I’ve always considered grief to be a man, that’s kind of just how we talk about it, the Grim Reaper is some cloaked male figure in every story, but once you know her, you know better. She could only ever be female. The way she wraps around you, with mortality’s measured touch, she can rip you to shreds. There’s nothing masculine about it. Somehow, she has become the worst friend I’ve ever had.
Her visits are always unannounced, when it was newer, it felt like she had moved in completely.
And now, sometimes I’ll just be sitting on the couch, reading a book, and I can feel her sidle up next to me, as her hand soothingly rubs my back. Her long nail draws down my spine in a way to remind me it would be one stroke to split me in half for good. But she doesn’t, that would be too generous.
Then there are days that she’s the most wicked, cursing me with chronic pain that makes every movement feel like shattered glass trapped beneath the thinnest layer of skin, but never able to break free and spare me the discomfort.
She's possessive, she’s jealous of my every happiness. She doesn't want to share, but she's patient. She is multitasking. She’s ironic. She’s consistent yet unpredictable. She’s the gilded frame around images of devastation. The rotten milk in the perfect cup of coffee. It doesn’t make sense and doesn’t have to.
It’s the worst club you can ever be a part of, no matter how good the company is. It’s the most human and universal experience. Something not unique but in no way would those experiencing it ever believe they aren’t the only ones to be in that much pain. How could pain like this exist in droves? How can I not be experiencing all that could possibly exist?
Loving someone is learning a language, word by word over time immersed in it. Being in love is a language only you both speak, the shared whispers and secrets of lovers unheard by anyone else. And when that person is gone you feel like the only person left on this planet fluent in something no one else can understand. Wandering the earth looking for someone to translate, but they never can.
As I lay in our bed, the wrinkles of the sheets we once shared are long gone, but the shape of you in them will exist with me forever.
I don’t like to be lost in my own mind, but sometimes that’s the only place you’re left whole. There are parts of you everywhere. In people and places we loved. But the only place you exist now completely is in my memories. And the mind is a cruel thing, men have gone mad over less than this. Like a hedge maze I’m constantly wandering following the trail of you with just my senses.
This place was ours, you built it with your love, and we filled it with every happily ever after anyone could wish for. But a happily ever after doesn’t mean it’s over. And now, in this after without you, I hold onto that. Because as long as I exist, so do you. Known in every room I enter, simply because I am there.
People think sadness is the most all consuming emotion of all. It’s not, it’s gratitude. It’s just funny how often we confuse them.