a light sweeping out
When Kurtis dies, all the white-coats tell me grief feels like fear and it does.
My mind running a ticker-tape: I’ll be alone. I’ll always feel this way. I don’t know what will happen next. I can’t tell if I’m sane. I’ve lost my place. I’m not doing this right. I can’t survive another death. Is there enough money? I have no home. I can’t do this.
What the white-coats do not tell me is that grief also makes me terrifying. This is something I will come to understand but it takes time. When, I wonder, do I realize?
I begin to make a list of moments.
I know that I do not realize when someone emails me: I’m worried about you but I can’t hear about your pain anymore. It is not when someone recognizes me and crosses the street to avoid me. It is not when someone direct messages me: I also run half-marathons and now I am so relieved every time I come through the door back safe with my wife and children. It is not when someone tells me they started having panic attacks at the thought of my husband’s death. It is not when someone physically steps away from me when they hear my husband is dead. It is not when someone tells me they cannot be my friend anymore because I am too much.
Even, I do not realize when, two years ago and counting, an editor rejects the book I have written about grief, about him, by saying—