Every Day, I Am Still Losing You

I broke down over you in a bookstore on Thursday. I was looking for scientific works on surgical procedures and I ended up sitting on the floor in front of the little section labeled “Grief-Loss”.

The titles fit onto a single self, tucked away at the very bottom as if they were shameful. Mourning was so many things to me, I guess shameful was sometimes one of them. I wasn’t looking to cry, my day had been good, but when my mind eased and wandered, my conscious brought me here. To books on grief because even though a year has passed since you died, I am still torn.

And so out of some desperate need to fill the hole that was forming in my chest, I grabbed three books and opened them in the reading section of the bookstore. The poems were my thoughts, the words were my dreams, and the author described my feelings exactly. The sorrow-filled pages were so in line with how I was feeling that it was morbid.

I had good days without you. I’ve been successful at work, happy in my home, and I am running again. The sunrises are beautiful again. I don’t wake up crying anymore, and though this feels so selfish and terrible to admit, I have been happy since the loss of you. I thought I was healing.

But here in the bookstore I sat, on a Thursday in chilly January, and broke down over you. I cried, hidden behind the books, and dug my fingers into the soft pink paperback cover that was designed to be a depressed sort of beautiful. It wasn’t the shame of public crying that hurt, not even really the fact that you were gone that dug at me.

The most painful thought I had without those ten minutes was the realization that I am not over you.

I am not well. I am still mourning. I had free reign to fall into any section of the bookstore, any other happy genre, but I was pulled to grief. I did it without thinking because in the back of my mind, I am still grasping your cold, stiff hand. I am still losing you.