They found Jaqui McDermott's remains and we are left to speculate on whether she gave up and ended her own life or fell off a cliff or got eaten by a bear or what, since there was no 'criminality' involved. They used to say 'foul play' but maybe that's out of fashion now, or someone got offended by the use of the word 'play' to describe monstrous things. Either way I know her family is hurting and life sucks so badly sometimes but then you see a beautiful sunset or hear a great new song and three minutes go by and you forget you're hurting but then you remember again. Eventually three minutes becomes three hours becomes three days becomes three weeks becomes three months..
And that's where it stops, I think. I don't go three months without thinking of Jacob or Cole, even as I launch into this season of misery, grifting happiness from anyone who doesn't have their nailed down. Less than four weeks and we would have been planning a birthday party. Less than four weeks and we would have been marvelling at seventeen years together and wondering where the time went.
The time is quicksand and I am up to my neck, as ever. You can still save yourself if you're only in it up to your chest, because you can use your arms. I am shorter and my arms are as mired as my legs. I am a statue made of grief, the hardest substance known to man, but also the most brittle. If the wind blows the wrong way I will shatter and dissolve into this mud, never to be seen again.
That's what grief does and I hope it never finds you.
I'm really having a hard time being online. I'm having a hard time with everything. I am so drugged out of my mind here it's hard to decide on a juice when I open the fridge and so I just default to grapefruit, every single day. Every day is a mindless float on an air mattress in a pool of my own nightmares and I don't know when it's time to go.
That's all. I don't know how to respectfully decline. I don't know how to convince the ghosts to leave, that the dinner party is over and I want to go to bed. I don't know how to stop it. I just don't know.