Ow

It's so hard to miss someone. There's just no way around it. It's this huge, suffocating, paralyzing pain.

The day tends to start with it. I wake up and for just a split moment, I forget why I am in so much pain. Why is my chest so tight? Why does my stomach hurt? Why is it so hard to open my eyes? Why are my feet so cold? Why do I feel so very, very small? And then I remember. The realization doesn't settle in, but rather crashes and crushes me. He's gone. Boom. Any desire to get out of bed evaporates. I want to stay there, sarcophagied in my mess of blankets, forever.

But then I have to pee. Wetting my bed, fortunately, is not yet an option. I do, however, wait until the last possible minute, until I'm about to burst. And then I get up. And it sucks. It's cold and I have to look at myself in the bathroom mirror on my way to the toilet and I look like garbage. My reflection hates me. I hate me. Even the tiles in the bathroom seem to hate me, making themselves extra cold for my feet.

Luckily, I also have a caffeine addiction, and so I know that now that I've gotten up I need to have coffee within the next thirty minutes unless I want to be greeted with a headache and extreme moodiness. At this point, I'd be crazy to add any more pain to my body. So I don't crawl back to my cocoon. I go to the kitchen.

I make my coffee, and as I start drinking it, I feel better, even if only because I managed to not go back to bed and stay there all day long. My phone, which is now a permanent extension of my hand, is dead silent. Call me. Please. Please please please. The chant is constant.

The day awaits me. Gym yoga rehearsal lunch with a friend book to read emails to send websites to check out call a friend write watch the food network go to the grocery store stop at barnes & nobles have a coffee laundry dishes wash hair dry hair comb hair paint nails call mom eat something go for a walk sit on the couch look at pores floss wander from the bedroom to the living room take out the trash go on facebook drink more coffee stare out into space organize socks look for any distraction anywhere all the time. I go through it- or some higher being inhabits my body and goes through it for me, I don't know. And yes, for some time, I am okay. There is some relief.

But then something will make me smile. And the muscles in my face will immediately register how strange that feels. You aren't happy. You're miserable. Don't you dare smile. The ache never left, there was no real relief. It's always there. I miss him.

It's hard and it hurts like hell. It is close to impossible to truly believe that it will get better, that it will pass, that it will shift, that I will grow from this experience. I hate every second of this.

The day ends and now I dread going back to bed. I know that sleeplessness and tears and guilt and a brain that can not stop thinking await me. Nighttime magnifies everything that's bad. I will lie down and a balloon will grow in my stomach, a big ball of hollowness.

I wait. I pace. I look for empty activities. My body will eventually tire. Or, I'll take an advil pm. And for a few hours, I will escape all of this. My mind will, anyway. My body seems to stay stuck and wake up in more pain, but my mind gets to go somewhere else.

And then it starts all over again.

It hurts. It hurts a lot.