Month: May 2025

It’s been an amount of time that I can’t make sense of today. How does it feel like decades of this new reality but also no time at all?

I didn’t go to work today. I put a lot of dates on a lot of documents at work, and the thought of staring this date down hundreds of time felt overwhelming. Maybe the third time around I will be able to treat the day like any other, but today I needed the solitude.

I slept way longer than normal. I was lethargic getting out of bed. I mourned and then got restless, switching to chores before a new wave of tears pulled me from the task. I had lunch with a trusted friend, but only because another friend alerted them to the day and its importance—I would have left myself cloistered away from the world alone today, even though I didn’t want the isolation, not really. I feel like the new burden of the time since my sister’s death is that I feel like my pain is now an inconvenience to raise to others. I carry it quietly so as not to bother them. No one could possibly want to have this knowledge, let alone put aside their own lives to sit with me as mine stands still.

For the record, I would never tell a friend to be like this. I do not recommend walking through life with the belief that no one around you wishes to be given the chance to step up and be there for you. My logical mind tells me there are plenty of people who would offer, but I do not create the space for them to try. And then I tell myself I am alone. Because I am alone. Because I have made it that way.

Tonight I will eat something frivolous that reminds me of my sister. Then I will get myself dressed and go join some good people for a weekly Tuesday hangout. Because the only way I can convince myself I am not alone is to not be alone.

I’ve lived almost two years now unable to shoot my sister a message and get a response. I thought that by now I would stop having moments where I feel the urge to text her—moments when I have forgotten that I live in a world without my sister. But it still happens. Not as frequently, and when it does, the re-realization doesn’t hit quite as hard as it used to. But the sting is still there.

I just finished an incredible two week trip. I did brave, bold things I’ve never done before. I leaned in and lived life fully. And in the most central part of my being I wished to be able to share some of it with my sister. I wanted to update her on the number of kilometers traveled. I wished I could send her egregious typos I found on public signage. I longed to buy her silly tourist trinkets that reminded me of her or inside jokes. But I can’t. That part of my life is over, and I never even knew the end was coming until it did.

In the almost two years, I’ve finally passed the point where I impulsively buy all the things I would have bought her, because I don’t need the random stuff in my life. I’ve also largely ceased sending messages to her now-defunct accounts and lamenting at the ever-growing length of the one-sided conversation. But there’s this hole nestled in every new experience, and it’s the exact shape of sharing the story with her.