A Short List Of Things That Happened Because You’re Dead

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I’ve never been scared to pick up my phone.

I get that talking on the phone is a legitimate fear for most people with anxiety, but I’ve never felt it.

Now I get so scared when I receive a phone call (because every-time I see a name from my past pop up,I think they’re calling to tell me someone else I loved has died)

I don’t even come up with a good excuse for not answering it anymore.

“I’m sorry.” That’s all people get from me now.

So I guess that’s not very new, the whole I’m sorry thing, but the phone thing terrifies me.

My “I love you’s” have only gotten more intense and filled with more fear than love.

I say I love you to everyone as if it’s life or death that they know that I love them. Which is only natural after what happened.

Or so I’ve been told.

I see the world like everything is a slightly darker shade of gray.

It’s always night time when I look outside, even if it’s the middle of the day and the sun is shining.

Although sometimes when I think I hear your laugh, or I think I see your father, It’s like I get flashes of the world with some colour in it.

Even though I feel like I’m healthier and better than I was a year ago, I know that I’ll never actually be okay. Maybe this is what my life is now even though I feel like I’m the greatest actress of all time putting on a life long play about how to be a normal woman in a normal city.

I’ve not so much pushed everyone out of my life, as I have let them all walk away.

My indifference to having people around me all the time, is actually rotting my relationships from the inside out.

Maybe none of this is new, and I’m just realizing all of this now, but it seems that I got shown all this about myself the day you died.

I’m not angry that you’re dead, nor am I that sad anymore. I’m probably envious that you found the peace that we are all searching for.

But as soon as I say that, I can hear your mothers cries in my head, it’s a stark reminder that peace comes at a price that isn’t at all fair for everyone else who doesn’t know you were rotting from the inside out.