I function as if on autopilot.  I have filled out complicated paperwork, held options and tough decisions in my head, I have even gone to school and written out meaningful lesson plans, but I am hollow, I am void, I am nothing.

I hold it together to go to the store, to have lunch with friends, to spend time with people.  Not because they expect me to have it all together, but because when I break it scares me.  When I stop fighting it and let the feelings rush, I am frightened by my anger, by my rage, by the depth of my sorrow.  

I got so mad, years ago, when my family first met James.  More than once I heard them say, “He makes you so happy!  It’s so clear to see how happy you are together!” They were right, of course, but I lamented to him at the time that I must have been quite the sour puss before he ever came along and thank goodness for my family’s sake that he did. But there was truth in what they said; he was my light.  He was my joy.  He was the very thing that made me laugh and made me smile.  He made me angry, too, but my anger came from the depth of my love.  

I stay up far later than I have in decades and I let melatonin help me sleep but there is nothing to help soften the reality of his absence when I wake.  The tasks on my daily to-do list are there due to his absence and only increase my awareness of this reality, they do nothing to help fill the void.  Paperwork full of questions he would easily know the answers to; cleaning a home he isn’t present in anymore; taking care of the animals that sense his absence as much as I do; even being with people – there is no escape from the constant suppressive feeling of his absence.  

I reluctantly went to school yesterday to do plans.  I might as well have been walking on Mars.  The classroom felt foreign to me; the concept of materials and creating learning experiences felt detached.  I typed, I copied, I gathered, I stacked and I left knowing I am so far from being ready to return.  

So where do I go?  What do I do?  How does a broken heart mend?  How do you recover when your best friend is gone?  How do I exist in a space that is so opposingly full and absent of him at the same time?  How do I exist in spaces where he is not or even be in spaces he never was?  Robert Frost says the best way out is always through, but I do not know how to do this world, this life, my life without James. We were to go through together, and left to my own, I am lost. He is not the only one who is absent for I have lost my soul.