As I skirt on the edge of sleep, I am revisited by that recurring sorrow that fixates on your absence. That much is true. But is this really what I feel? Or is this an illusion, my self unknowingly acting out a part it thinks appropriately dramatic and incontrovertibly human?

It is hard to make out anymore. So assaulted do I find myself everyday by dictates as to what is normal and expected. The first axiom in these pronouncements is that to live alone is to waste the gift we were given. I fought against this seemingly arbitrary dictum for many years, till at one point the pull got too strong. The interim years you will remember as one where I found myself in a pit of pity, sorrow, and bitterness. Even now, the thought that so much time was spent struggling to accept a seemingly trivial matter makes me baffled, and a little disappointed.

This disappointment makes it an appropriate time, then, to revisit my opposition. Could it be the road to peace? To admit that, while life with you would likely have been special, quite possibly richer than the one I live out these days, in truth, there are still things to like about this one. Whatever claims of emptiness I throw at it, most of them are out of a desperate sense of wanting to belong, and the remaining few of them are quite likely easy to correct. My biggest concern with the matter, if I am being honest, is simply what others would make of me. But so what if I am seen as an object of pity, or even scorn? There are many experiences that will be shut to me; I do not burn up with tortured thoughts on most of them, and this matter, I think, should be no different. I mean this not an assertion of nihilism or self-pity, but rather, just a statement of the way the world is. Accepting this, I can at least hope to move forward.