Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 145823 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145823 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
I twisted off the top and chugged half the bottle, trying to dislodge the tension in my throat—to swallow it down—but it didn’t help. It never did. A few moments passed while I watched the waves crash on the beach outside the window.
“I have trouble talking about him,” I finally admitted. “I don’t really know where to start—how to sum him up in words—and then I can’t breathe because I know exactly how it…ends, and I can’t go there.”
“To when he died?”
I nodded. “It’s like opening Pandora’s box. I can’t pick and choose what comes out of it.”
“That’s fair.” She nodded slowly. “How often do you think about him?”
My eyes jumped back to hers. “More than I should.” All the time. Every minute of every day. If my life was an ocean, then the water was Will. Always there, sometimes calm, deep, and soothing, and sometimes he was a tsunami ready to pull me under in waves of grief so deep I wondered when I’d eventually drown.
“And who told you that there was an appropriate amount of thinking to be done?” She sipped her tea.
I blinked. “Everyone, I guess. Family. Friends. My old psychiatrist. I’m supposed to get over it, right? It’s not supposed to still hurt like this.”
She studied me carefully, but it wasn’t intrusive or judgmental. “How long has it been?”
“Twenty-two months.” The longest months of my damn life. Every day felt like it was a personal test designed to see how much I could take.
Some days, I won. Some days, I didn’t.
“Has it gotten any better? The grief?”
“Compared to what?”
“Compared to the first month or so after he passed.”
He hadn’t passed. He’d been taken. Hell, he’d given his life away.
“No,” I finally answered. “But I gave up on that a long time ago. Kind of figured this was simply the way things would be now. This is how I am.”
“And how is that?”
“Broken.” I stared at the water in my hands. “My previous doctor told me it’s anxiety and depression. You have my file.”
“I do.” She put her tea down and scribbled on a little notepad. “But I’d rather hear it from you than read another clinician’s notes. When you think of your future, what do you see for yourself?”
What did I see? It had been so long since I thought about goals that I wasn’t sure I even had them anymore.
“I don’t know. I mean, I bought my house, and I need to fix it up. I took a job that starts in September.” I shrugged.
“And past that? What about long term?”
“That is long term.” Anything past this week was long term as far as I was concerned.
Her brow puckered for a moment before she gave me an understanding nod. “Okay, and friends?”
“I have friends. There are a couple I’m still really close to, but the others…” I looked back out at the ocean like it had the answers I needed. “They moved on, and I’m stuck. Like someone pressed pause and I’m still waiting for him to come home from that deployment.”
She scribbled on her pad again. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know whatever it was she wrote on that thing. “And moving here…was that looking to the future?”
Yes was what she wanted to hear. A healthy person would have said that moving here was their new start. That they were ready to wake up and greet the morning with the kind of optimism that simply didn’t exist for me.
“Be honest,” she urged, her eyes kind. “There’s no right or wrong answer. I’m just getting a feel for where you are in the process.”
“He was everywhere,” I said softly. “In Alabama, I couldn’t go anywhere without being accompanied by a memory of him. I couldn’t teach at our elementary school or eat at the same restaurants, because…he was everywhere. And everyone in our little town thought I should either be over him or setting up a shrine.”
“So you escaped.”
I nodded.
“How did your loved ones feel about the move?”
“My mother is pretty unhappy with me. She thinks a woman has no business living alone. Guess she forgets she was raising me on her own at this age. The friends I’m still close to are supportive. One of them is here, actually.”
“So you do have a support structure here?”
“Sam’s just visiting, and I can support myself.”
“And the others? The ones who have moved on, as you said?”
Guilt smacked me.
“I haven’t told them I moved. Haven’t talked to them in months, really. I can’t…I just need a break from them.” I finished the last part on a whisper. It was the first time I’d said it aloud to anyone but Sam: I couldn’t stand to be near most of my friends. My avoidance was more than declining a call once in a while. It had become methodical.
“And when is the last time you felt happy? Or at least weren’t thinking about your loss?”