Fucking torture. I can’t be sunny about it. It’s lonely. How do you spend so much time and never get tired of someone? I know it’s lucky. I get that. I wish that helped.

I’m arguing with myself. I often do.

Nearly six months into this grieving and I’ve gotten to know myself better, but also still can’t see where I belong in this world, or who I am to others. And this only matters because being seen, heard, held screams inside me to be tended, and I get that harsh reminder that my default setting is weird, and when I need contact the most, intimidating as fuck.

I guess something broke in us around the same time. I was catching up with a coworker yesterday, mostly focusing on the excitement of his upcoming trip to NYC, where he’ll live for six weeks, after spending his first few decades in the upper-Midwest. He and I were both in New York for work in mid-December, apparently each having our own separate renaissance. Being a sucker for midday coffee and fine pastry, I headed out from the office and invited him along, which led to a conversation I barely remember, but was at least partially responsible for his returning home to plan out his springtime move.

The cool thing is that I’ll happen to be in NYC the same time he’s there, so I look forward to checking in to the office to see how it’s going. I think that being so far away from the familiar grants us the opportunity to explore different parts of ourselves. I am very much looking forward to my trip. I already have a couple plans to connect with friends new and old, and of course my bonkers two days of tattooing in the Hudson Valley.

Jon needs to move out. His stuff, at least. My bedroom has stopped being restful, and I could use the space to put away some things that are taking up room on the floor. The kitchen cabinets, the refrigerator and freezer, the bathrooms. It’s cleaning up after a roommate moved out abruptly leaving everything, only it’s not your roommate, it’s the love of your life dying, and every piece, even a mostly empty old condiment in the back of the fridge, has a memory.

I’ve decided move out is Memorial Day weekend. I’ll invite whoever wants to help, I’ll get a storage unit, and in whatever state I can do it, I’ll move his stuff, clean out the fridge, find a home for his retro computing, or at least just land it somewhere else so I don’t have to be reminded every where I turn of what I’ve lost, when I need to build something towards the future.

In my heartbreak over the past few weeks, a few times I’ve gone up to my bedroom closet and held Jon’s shirts, hanging in the closet, in a bunch, in a hug, and sobbed against them. It feels cliche. It feels almost embarassing to admit it, but I guess this is something that grief does. A few weeks ago I considered creating a golem from his shirts. I both don’t want them purged from my closet, and need it done at the same time.

Every Griefletter is a little harder to compose. I feel like the grief doesn’t get easier, it just morphs a bit into a different cloud over a different part of my life. I’ve found myself feeling depressed, lonely, my flesh hungry, barbs growing, folding in, isolating. I have a tattoo appointment locally on Friday. I’m hoping I can dig my way up. We plant a tree with Jon’s soil in a little under two weeks. My feet are heavy, moving forward is hard. Friends checking in are a gift. I live for bits of art sent in text, a gif or Reel.

I’m pressing send on this Griefletter, because it’s time for me to go to work. Love.