Wrapping the line with a larks head around the big toe, then around the second, around the foot, then the third toe, holding on, then a gasp, a yelp. Turning to the co-instructor, asking, "How can I make this hurt more?"

The drop came down in a way I hadn't expected. The next day, I was depleted after work. It's week three of my colleague being down for the count, and after being ill last week myself, I felt behind. I asked my eldest to help in the kitchen after dinner, and he was in a mood. We're both hurting our own hurts. He left me to finish the kitchen and the trash and everything, and I start crying. And crying. He was having a moment of feeling isolated, alone, unloved - despite all the evidence to the contrary. So was I, and then left alone with the dishes and trash and all the Monday chores. And I have to be the adult.

So I cried, huge wracking sobs, curled up on the couch in my office. Snot filled my throat and I choked a little. The aftermath lasting days. My eyes haven't completely healed. I wasn't prepared how far I'd fall from floating. But why wouldn't I? I don't drink anymore, because it makes me sad. I don't do cannabis because the panic attacks come days after, wrecking me. So what do I have? My hyperfixations of joining community and skills building with a dash of consensual sadism?

We leave for a week in Iceland on Saturday. The stupid, heart-shaped boxed holiday keeps reminding me of things I want to forget. After 20 years I can't say we really did much celebrating, but we didn't have to I guess. We were just there. More important than gifts or a fancy meal was just being there. It's the mundane things I continue to miss. Like when my eldest is having a bad day, and I am too, with Jon I wasn't alone in that moment.

My heart is breaking all of the time.

It's just whether or not I've found something to distract me long enough. Take me out of my body or crush me in, just don't leave me in this base space where my limbs move awkwardly as being driven remotely by my tender screaming self. I am a human-acting puppet, mostly capable of fooling folks that I am not on the verge of collapse with my energy depleted and consumed with yearning.

The soil has been picked up, and I've picked which tree I will buy and have delivered to the cidery. Date and time selected. I expect somewhere between 10 and 20 of us. Vernal equinox. It feels fitting, as he passed near the autumnal. My kids were due on the winter and spring solstices. For an atheist, there's one thing I adore, it's the seasons and the marks of time. It sounds like the beavers near the river have been busy tearing down trees, so one thing I have to consider is beaver-proofing his tree. But also there's the embrace of impermanence.

This week has felt heavy.

Grief is still surprising me. Looking for a Europe outlet converter plug in his office, it whispered in my head, "I could text him," I could? I would?

I can't.

"Such a long, long time to be gone and a short time to be there."

I feel the block of time that he occupied, somewhere in my heart, like a cube containing him. It’s a physical dimension of time that I perceive in a synesthetic way near impossible to describe.

Lately, I'm digging into my past to try on old pieces of myself. Some of them still fit, and some of them I've outgrown. Seeing the line of continuity amuses me sometimes, allowing me to somehow be forever young and an ancient simultaneously. I've made new friends, reconnected with folks, and in just a short month of speedrunning my distractions have figured out parts of myself that I'm both grateful to have come to terms with so quickly, and also sad how quickly the riddle gets solved.

I'm hoping my travels will prove a respite in ways I can't conceive of yet. Mostly I just want to not desire to run so hard, so far, from sitting in the hungry loneliness.